Custom Media Center Inspiration

My poor husband gets the most difficult requests from me for gifts.  Most hubbies (other than my fellow DIY'ers) get requests like jewelery, shoes, clothes, even gift cards.  Unfortunately my sweets is not lucky enough to hear such requests.  This Christmas, my wish was to have him build me a custom media center for our TV, all other A/V stuff, storage for toys and blankets, and to decorate with and be the focal point of our fairly boring family room.  When we built our home 2 years ago we opted not to include a fireplace in the family room to cut back on costs, but I wish so badly we had done it.  When we build out our basement (hopefully in the next 2 years), we will definitely put one in.  For the upstairs though, I still want a beautiful center piece even if it doesn't get to include a fireplace.  SOOO that's what I asked for Christmas.  Oh, and crown moulding all around the kitchen and living room... minor details...  Being the incredible man that he is, instead of laughing at my request, he sighed, took a few seconds to respond (while he was likely trying to remember why on earth he married me in the first place) and said "show me what it needs to look like".  Man, I love that man.  :)

So after pinning my life away on pinterest, I found several different ideas for inspiration but nothing was quite exactly what I wanted... until I saw this gorgeous piece from Ethan Allen:

Source

Suddenly I head the heavens open up and the angels sing, "Hallelujah!"  Okay, not really but that's how excited I was.  HOLY. COW.  It is beautiful.  So, we got drafting and plotting.  Here comes the best part.  I had to run into my mom's attic the next day for a costume and saw some cabinet pieces lurking out from behind some boxes.

She had these extra cabinets and door fronts wasting their lives away in her attic from an order they had placed where the color was done wrong. So, they had to re-do them but my parents had to keep the first set.  They had tried to sell them at a garage sale, but had no luck?!?! Needless to say I became her yard sale buyer and we get to use them as a part of our design.  They look just like the Ethan Allen one also.  So my friends, here's a rough sketch of what we're (as in my dear sweets along with my inspiring words of encouragement) building:

We recruited my talented bro-in law who does carpentry work to help us with this project, and it should be going underway soon.  I can't wait!!!

Pictures of the end result and hopefully a detailed tutorial of what we they did will be coming soon.  If I'm really lucky, I may have my Christmas gift finished before next Christmas.... :)

Have any of you done any built in/ entertainment units in your home?  Want to share some words of wisdom?  Anything you wish you would have included for storage? I hope I've covered all my bases here...

~PW