Agreed. If you can leverage something to your advantage but still be a compromise, win, win. That’s how I sold my atmos plan to my wife. She wanted my side surrounds gone(they stuck out almost 17” and weighed about 35lbs ea) so I said sure. But I’m gonna move them into the walls(not cheap), and add 4 in the ceiling. I have 12 can lights in the LR, and 2 ac vents, so I don’t think they’ll stand out too much. When we built our house, a rule I made was NO tv above a fireplace, for at least half a dozen reasons. One of which was, even 15 years ago, I was tired of the whole “hey, let’s put a tv above the fireplace”. It’s like the Walmart of design ideas. Just too generic. I think builders/designers should be banned from the practice. Safety concerns aside, our gas insert, and I’m sure yours, has a fan to blow the hot air from behind it. Therefore the heat gets good coverage and you don’t have to a actually be that close to it(which I still do like to do), so it can potentially not bleed much heat directly above it(you know, where the tv is). I’m also not of the happy wife, happy wife philosophy. That doesn’t mean I don’t love to please her, but hey, I live here too. It’s not my wife’s life, it’s all of ours.
