SGN Page 31

Real Estate

Real Estate
Americans love to be entertained, so it should come as no surprise that a hot trend in home improvement these days is to transform one of the most spacious rooms in the house into a home theater. A place not only for watching movies, but listening to your favorite music, entertaining, and just kicking back and relaxing. Whether you decide to build your home theater in the family room, den, an extra bedroom or the basement, the typical room design will include a comfortable sofa or theater chairs, as well as the screen (typically a flat screen TV), receiver, CD player, DVD player, a cable or satellite box, and speakers for giving a more dramatic audio surround sound experience. With so many different elements to get into the same space, one of the most important decisions youll have to make is how to house all your new equipment. Todays traditional home theater furniture looks fine, but its inadequate for the needs of modern home theaters. You need a system that not only fits in with the furniture you already have, but takes display space, storage of media and wires, and the needs of the equipment into account, says Keith Pribyl, director of consumer sales for Sanus Systems, a St. Paul, Minnesota-based company that designs and builds furnishings, mounts and accessories for A/V set-ups. He says Sanus Systems lowboy cabinets are hot sellers these days because they take all the needs of modern day home theaters into account. They are wider in length yet narrower in depth to fit the profile of the flat panel TVs; and also feature shelves specially designed to fit the space needs of audio and video equipment, wire channels that neatly house all the cords, and cooling systems that allow the equipment to dissipate heat. They also come in the hottest finishes. For several years, lighter color woods, such as maple and cherry, have been the most popular in the furniture industry, but were now seeing a resurgence in the popularity of darker woods, says Pribyl. A popular seller right now is the Java line which comes in espresso finished oak veneers. No matter what wood style and finish you choose, there are a variety of complementary door and drawer coverings available, allowing for individual design tastes and equipment requirements. Among them, grill cloth panels, textured glass panels, and mixed wood panels.