Wired: Stealth Tech
From Carolina Home + Garden Magazine, Summer 2008 issue
Stealth Tech
At first glance, you wouldn’t exactly call David and Denise Turner’s home "state of the art." Tucked into a hillside above Asheville, the house exudes historic charm: natural stone fireplaces, plaster walls and exposed beams. Yet beneath that calm, composed demeanor, the house is wired: fitted with a system that would raise a technophile’s pulse. But it’s stealth tech — virtually invisible.
A decorative shelf displays local art and conceals the 72" Draper screen.
"The house was really comfortable, and we wanted to keep it that way," David says. In order to preserve that character, they didn’t want any visible electronics or showy, modern features when they added high-end audio and video systems. That meant no big speakers, no visible stack of electronics, and certainly no wires. No cinema-style home theater with a popcorn machine. Most importantly, they didn’t want the television to be the focal point of any room.
To create this subtle integration of high-end technology, the Turners hired Harmony Interiors, an Asheville firm with interior designers who work alongside technicians. The company specializes in audio/video systems that blend with — rather than dominate — their surroundings. "Often, it’s the audio/video guys versus the interior designers," notes co-owner Scott Varn. "Ours work together, and most of our engineers have an art major background or they do art on the side."
The Turner’s entertainment system actually evolved over several years. Harmony Interiors installed the audio system when the Turners first bought and remodeled the home in 2001. The discreet home theater was added more recently.
David also occasionally works from home, so he needed a Local Area Network to offer him the best bandwidth for his office. That created an ideal opportunity for two other projects: installing a house-wide speaker system and pre-wiring the home for future technology.
"We’re not big TV people," David says. He and Denise prefer to listen to music — from jazz to singer-songwriter to rock — while they spend time with their children, read or cook.
Rather than turning the stereo on full blast to hear it in throughout the house, the Turners can choose the locations where they want to hear their music. While the great room, where the stereo is located, has surround sound, other parts of the house, such as the reading room, outside porch and master bath, are wired for stereo. Bose speakers installed on the ceilings are efficient, but unobtrusive, and a sub-woofer in the reading room has been installed in the floor beneath a faux heating vent.
The Turners even get use out of the bathroom speakers, listening to National Public Radio’s morning news each day while getting ready for work.
A custom wormy chestnut table conceals the Sony projector with a sliding door.
"I think it just kind of speaks to our lifestyle," David says. "My wife and I always have music on. I spend way more money on music than I should," he admits. Still, the couple didn’t want the clutter of compact discs, so they packed their collection into several binders in the built-in media cabinet. The binders rarely get opened these days, however — all the music has been downloaded onto a computer hard drive in the home office. A Roku device in the stereo cabinet allows them to access that music, create custom playlists or randomly shuffle tunes.
Other than the Roku, the media cabinet, placed high in the living room wall and accessible from behind in the laundry room, holds only a high definition television tuner and a single Bose amplifier with a built-in CD/DVD player. It’s that simple. In keeping with the unobtrusive, minimalist design, the entire system can also be controlled by one remote with a tiny digital screen that’s easy to navigate.
The most unassuming part of the system is the television — despite the fact that it’s a 73-inch screen. "Many people, the first thing they would have done was put the television over the fireplace," Varn notes. Not so here.
When a visitor walks into the Turner’s living room, they notice the stone fireplace, with a large impressionist painting above the thick wooden mantle. The adjacent wall has handmade woven baskets displayed on a decorative shelf made of wormy chestnut. Another wall, which opens to the kitchen, has natural stone and a shelf with books and DVDs. Finally, the fourth wall has south-facing windows and doors.
So where’s the TV? The orientation of the couches provides a clue.
They face the chestnut display shelf, which hides a pull-down screen. The coffee table, also made of wormy chestnut, hides a projector. The wires run from the projector through a hollowed out leg, through a tiny hole in the floor beneath the table leg, and up through the built-in media cabinet.
"It does take a little effort to turn it on, but we see that as a good thing," Turner said. "It’s not something you would just click on and then walk around the house. We enjoy movies and sports, so it makes watching them more of an event, instead of just background noise.
"But most of all, I like the fact that when the TV’s not on, you don’t know it’s here."
