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

The Project

The brief was about as simple as they come: do something with this wall. That's what brought us out to this ETown home in Jacksonville, Florida. The homeowners had a wide living room with light wood-tone LVP flooring and a ceiling fan centered in the space. But the main focal wall was completely bare. No fireplace. No built-in. Nothing to anchor the room or give the eye a place to settle.

What we designed together was a full custom TV entertainment feature wall. Eight inches of depth, framed from scratch, skinned in drywall, finished flat and painted in pure-white Emerald urethane satin. A recessed 72-inch linear electric fireplace sits at the base, and a custom pine floating mantle finished in a weathered oak stain sits 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. A flat white surface, a couple of outlet boxes, and a ceiling fan with no architectural moment to belong to. Nothing wrong structurally. The room just had 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 go into the new structure, and placement had to be exact. We set the opening at 11 inches off the finished floor. That's a low, deliberate placement that gives the unit a grounded, furniture-like feel instead of sitting at traditional mantle height. Framing the rough opening to the exact dimension of that insert, then holding the correct depth through the drywall phase so the unit would sit flush, took 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 Minwax Weathered Oak to pull some warm wood tone against all that crisp white. Shelf thickness, projection off the wall face, vertical placement between two large black fixtures: we had 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. Look at the framing photo below and you can see the tightly spaced vertical studs running 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 read as intentional and architectural without eating too far 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. Clean fireplace rough opening at the base, 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 reading as a crisp, deliberate architectural element, not something patched in.

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 light will find 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, and that matters on a high-touch area like this.

Then the 72-inch electric fireplace went into its opening at that 11-inch floor height. The wide, low format spans nearly the full width of the wall structure and gives the finished piece a distinctly modern, linear feel. Above the opening we installed the custom pine floating mantle. The board was finished with Minwax Weathered Oak, which brought out the grain and landed in that warm, sandy-gray range that sits right against the pure white surround. The TV mount was secured into solid blocking in the upper framing, and the television hung centered on the wall.

The Result

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

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

The angled view shows how the 8-inch depth reads in the room. Enough to give the wall real presence and make it feel like part of the home's architecture, not something applied to the surface. The light wood LVP flooring and the warm fan tones play well against the pure white, and the weathered oak mantle ties the two palettes together without forcing it.

This is the kind of project we do throughout ETown and across Duval County. Take a blank wall. Build something that feels like it was always meant to be there.

Ready for Your Own Feature Wall in ETown or Jacksonville?

If you have a blank wall in your Jacksonville home that's calling for a built-in TV and fireplace feature wall, we'd be glad to talk through the design with you. ETown, the broader Duval County area, anywhere across Northeast Florida: AVP Construction JAX handles the framing, the drywall, and the final coat of paint. Take a look at more of our custom TV entertainment center work and reach out when you're ready. We'll help you figure out exactly what your space needs.