Custom Built-In Entertainment Center with LED Shelving Around Fireplace — Tamaya, Jacksonville FL

The Project

This project sits inside a spacious, two-story great room in Tamaya, one of Jacksonville's most sought-after communities on the Southside. The homeowners had a well-appointed fireplace with a classic white mantel already in place, but the wide walls flanking it were completely bare. There was no storage, no display space, and no real anchor for the room. A large TV was already wall-mounted above the mantel — but without any millwork surrounding it, the whole wall felt unfinished, like a chapter that hadn't been written yet.

What the family wanted was straightforward but meaningful: a focal point that felt intentional and custom, with enough storage to keep things tidy, without the wall feeling overdone or cluttered. They wanted the room to breathe — just elevated.

In the before photo above, you can see exactly what we were working with: an existing fireplace and mantel, a TV mount already installed, and two large blank walls on either side with nothing to tie them together. The notes scrawled right on the photo during our planning walkthrough tell the story — LED shelves, painted white, built to specific dimensions to fill those flanking bays perfectly.

The Challenge

The tricky part of a job like this isn't always the carpentry — it's the integration. That existing fireplace surround and mantel had its own proportions, its own detailing, its own personality. Anything we built on either side had to feel like it was always meant to be there, not like something that was bolted on afterward. Get the scale wrong, choose the wrong crown profile, or leave an awkward gap at the transition point, and the whole thing reads as an afterthought.

In a Duval County home with soaring two-story ceilings like this one, that challenge is amplified. The built-ins needed to be tall enough to hold their own visually against all that vertical space, without overwhelming the room or swallowing the fireplace. Every proportion decision — shelf height, cabinet depth, crown molding scale — had to be thought through carefully before a single piece was cut.

The Build

We started the build the way we start every custom project: in the shop. Before anything touched the homeowner's living room floor, the bookcase carcasses were built, assembled, and pre-finished in our Jacksonville workshop.

Here in the shop you can see both bookcase units standing side by side — painted white, shelves set, ready to transport. Building off-site first is one of the ways we keep job-site time tight and protect the client's home. It also lets us quality-check the fit and finish in a controlled environment before we ever load the truck.

On day one at the Tamaya home, we had the TV mount already in place and began positioning the base cabinet carcasses on the left side of the fireplace. You can see the raw birch cabinet boxes going in flanking the mantel, furniture protected under plastic sheeting while we worked. The floor protection went down immediately — these clients had beautiful hardwood floors and we kept them clean throughout.

By the end of the first day, both base cabinet runs were positioned on either side of the fireplace. Here you can see the raw cabinet boxes set low on both flanks, the TV mount still bare above the mantel, and the large open wall bays above waiting for the upper bookcase sections to arrive. Getting the base level and plumb on day one is critical — everything that goes on top depends on it.

Day two was when the job really started taking shape. The upper bookcase unit on the right side is shown here fully installed, painted white, crown molding fitted tight at the ceiling line and masked with green tape for final touch-up. You can see the shaker-style lower cabinet doors getting their frames fitted, and the TV bracket is still visible above the mantel waiting for the surround panels to close in around it. The crown we chose matches the scale of that two-story ceiling — substantial enough to read from across the room, clean enough not to compete with the fireplace mantel's existing detail.

The TV surround panel was built and installed as a deliberate architectural frame — pilasters on either side of the screen, a header above that ties visually into the mantel below it. The goal was to make the TV wall and the fireplace wall feel like one cohesive composition rather than two separate elements stacked on top of each other. We think we nailed it.

LED strip lighting was routed along the back edge of every shelf in both bookcase bays — tucked so the light source itself is hidden and only the warm wash of light across the shelf surface is visible. The strips are fully color-changeable, which turned out to be one of the homeowners' favorite features once they saw it live.

The Result

We wrapped the entire project in three days — a full custom built-in entertainment center, flanking bookcases with LED lighting, shaker lower cabinets with brushed hardware, and a TV surround that ties the whole wall together. In a home that size, in Tamaya, that's a fast turnaround without any corners cut.

The straight-on after shot tells the story cleanly: two symmetrical bookcase towers flank the fireplace, each with four open display shelves bathed in warm LED light and four shaker-style lower cabinet doors for hidden storage. The TV sits centered in a custom-built surround that echoes the mantel detailing below it. Crown molding caps the upper bookcase sections and ties into the ceiling. The whole wall reads as one designed moment — exactly what the homeowners asked for.

From a slightly wider angle you can appreciate how the built-ins relate to the room's scale. Those two-story ceilings could have made the wall feel awkward or underdeveloped, but the tall bookcase towers hold their ground. The light trim tone keeps everything airy and connected to the rest of the home's palette.

And then there's the fun part. Switch the LED strips to blue and the room transforms entirely — a dramatic, moody backdrop perfect for movie nights or entertaining. The color-changing capability built into this Jacksonville living room gives the homeowners a space that can shift its energy with the occasion. Warm white for a relaxed evening by the fire; vivid blue when the family wants something more electric. That kind of versatility is hard to achieve with any off-the-shelf solution.

From above — looking down from the second-floor overlook — you get the full picture of how the built-in entertainment center anchors the great room. The symmetry is clean, the proportions are right, and the fireplace that was once floating in an empty wall is now the centerpiece of a room that finally feels complete.

Ready for Your Own Custom Entertainment Center in Tamaya or Jacksonville?

If you have a fireplace, a bare wall, or a living room that just needs a focal point, AVP Construction JAX builds custom TV entertainment centers and built-in shelving throughout Jacksonville and Duval County. We design around what's already in your space, build to last, and finish on time. Reach out and let's talk about what your room could become.