Custom TV & Fireplace Feature Wall in ETown Jacksonville FL | AVP Construction JAX

The Project

Sometimes the most dramatic transformations start with the simplest brief: do something with this wall. That's exactly what brought us out to this ETown home in Jacksonville, Florida. The homeowners had a wide, open living room with beautiful light wood-tone LVP flooring and a ceiling fan centered right in the middle of the space — but the main focal wall was completely bare. No fireplace. No built-in. Nothing to anchor the room and give it a sense of purpose.

What we designed together was a full custom TV entertainment feature wall — 8 inches of depth, framed from scratch, skinned in drywall, finished flat and painted in a pure-white Emerald urethane satin — with a recessed 72-inch linear electric fireplace and a custom pine floating mantle finished in a weathered oak stain sitting right between the TV and the flames.

The Challenge

The before photo tells the whole story of where we started. As you can see in the image below, the wall was completely empty — just a flat white surface with a couple of outlet boxes and a ceiling fan that had no architectural moment to belong to. There was nothing wrong with the room structurally; it just had no character, no hierarchy, no place for the eye to land.

The real complexity on this job came from the fireplace integration. The customer had a 72-inch electric fireplace insert that needed to be reinstalled into the new structure, and the placement had to be precise — we set the fireplace opening at 11 inches off the finished floor. That's a low, intentional placement that gives the unit a grounded, furniture-like feel rather than sitting up at traditional mantle height. Getting the rough opening framed to the exact dimension of that insert, then maintaining the correct depth through the drywall phase so the unit would sit flush, required careful coordination from day one.

On top of that, the homeowners wanted a custom pine floating mantle between the TV and the fireplace — finished with a Minwax Weathered Oak stain to pull in some warm wood tone against all that crisp white. Getting the proportions right — shelf thickness, projection from the wall face, and vertical placement between two large black fixtures — took a few layout conversations before we committed to cutting.

The Build

We started with a full wood-framed structure built directly in front of the existing wall. Looking at the framing photo below, you can see how we built out the wall cavity with tightly spaced vertical studs from floor to near-ceiling height, with a dedicated rough opening framed at the base for the fireplace insert. The framing depth gave us the 8-inch projection the homeowner wanted — enough to feel intentional and architectural without eating too much into the room.

Once the framing was squared and secured, we sheathed the entire structure in drywall. The photo below shows the wall after the drywall was hung and screwed off — you can see the clean fireplace rough opening left at the base, the edges taped off in green painter's tape at the perimeter where the new wall meets the existing ceiling and side walls. That transition line had to be razor sharp; the whole effect depends on the built-in wall reading like a crisp, deliberate architectural element rather than something patched together.

With the drywall set, we mudded, taped, and finished the surface completely flat — no texture, no orange peel. Flat finish is harder to pull off than it sounds in Florida because humidity and lighting conditions will expose every imperfection. We took our time on the skim coat passes, sanded smooth, and primed before rolling on the Emerald urethane satin in pure white. The urethane formula gives the surface a subtle sheen and a durability you don't get from standard wall paint, which matters on a high-touch area like this.

The 72-inch electric fireplace was then set into the opening at that 11-inch floor height. The wide, low format of the unit — spanning nearly the full width of the wall structure — gives the finished piece a distinctly modern, linear feel. Above the fireplace opening, we installed the custom pine floating mantle. The board was finished with Minwax Weathered Oak, which brought out the grain beautifully and landed in that warm, sandy-gray zone that pairs perfectly with the pure white surround. Finally, the TV mount was secured into the solid blocking in the upper framing, and the television was hung centered on the wall.

The Result

The difference is hard to overstate. Where there was once a featureless white wall, there's now a commanding architectural built-in that anchors the entire living room in this ETown Jacksonville home. The full-width after shot below shows how the feature wall reads in context — the TV centered up top, the weathered oak pine mantle floating as a warm wood accent in the middle, and the long horizontal glow of the electric fireplace at the base, all wrapped in that crisp flat white finish.

Up close, the craftsmanship details come through clearly. The drywall edges are clean and sharp where the built-in meets the surrounding walls and ceiling. The fireplace sits perfectly flush in its opening. The pine mantle has just the right amount of projection — enough to cast a subtle shadow line and feel substantial, not so much that it crowds the space between the TV and the flames below.

The angled view from the side shows how the 8-inch depth reads in the room — it's enough to give the wall real presence and make it feel like part of the home's architecture rather than something applied to the surface. The light wood LVP flooring and the warm fan tones play nicely against the pure white, and the weathered oak mantle ties the two palettes together cleanly.

This is exactly the kind of project we love doing in ETown and across Duval County — taking a blank canvas and building something that feels like it was always meant to be there.

Ready for Your Own Feature Wall in ETown or Jacksonville?

If you've got a blank wall in your Jacksonville home that's begging for a built-in TV and fireplace feature wall, we'd love to talk through the design with you. Whether you're in ETown, the broader Duval County area, or anywhere across Northeast Florida, AVP Construction JAX handles everything from the framing to the final coat of paint. Check out more of our custom TV entertainment center work and reach out to get started — we'll help you figure out exactly what your space needs.