Well, thanks for your feedback everyone, I am still undecided, I really do want it to be a dense screen. What is the worst that could happen if i space them 7 or 8 ft apart rather than 10 ft? I am thinking this way to be cautious because they do have to put up with a bit of competition near the property line from the neighobors established prunus, so I want something vigorous. thanks , if anyone has more feedback.

less expensive cabinet companies offer 30,36,42 wall heights. Your more talented companys offer 33,and 39 in there and various heights over 42" most of your displays in big box stores and other similar places have a 6" difference in height. Do not forget you taller cabinets have to be deeper for the crown to look good.

Okay I'll post here then. Thanks for the kind words. Disclaimer - no engineer here, only gadgets are the TV and the Wii. We rent movies off of Amazon so no DVD player either. Haha! We use our fireplace all the time. We even use it in the spring when it's sunny but cold and the furnace isn't running as much. It's definitely not just decorative for us. We went back and forth on above the fireplace and beside it also. We finally just went with our initial plan which is what we have. It was hard to decide but I didn't really want the TV above. I also really wanted a hearth which brings the mantle up higher (there is a heat requirement so many inches above the firebox) and that would have made the TV pretty high. We have 9' ceilings. EDIT: Corrected ceiling height to 9'. The cabinets are 19 1/2" deep. The fireplace is 25". When we first moved in we didn't have it mounted yet and it was definitely hard (okay nearly impossible to see the whole screen) to see from the left side of the couch. Most mounts seem to only extend 18" and I knew from just placing the tv at that depth that it was going to be tough to get a full viewing angle at 18". I found this mount: 25" extension articulating mount on amazon and we love it. It pulls forward the 25" and it tilts. Very flexible and it made a huge difference. It now pulls forward about flush with the fireplace when we want it to. We normally keep it in that position but you can push it back to the wall and I don't think it protrudes too much at all. NOTE: For this kind of set up - a 1 arm mount would not work. They do not pull straight out from the wall and with the small clearance we had on either side of the TV we had to have it pull straight out. Mrs Pete I am sure your engineer hubby would be all over that anyhow but I thought I'd mention it. We have a single arm mount on our exercise room tv and I fiddled with that one and realized it wouldn't work for this application. But if you have more clearance you could be fine. I didn't want a huge TV in our living room so I worked around the size he had purchased which I think is a 40"? Something like that. The arches were actually simple to do. We checked out how to do them with drywall but found the ones below and it was so easy. We took measurements and ordered them on line from Archways. They were made to fit and installed by dh in a jiffy. They were reasonably priced too. I think about $30 bucks a piece? Don't quote me though it was too long ago now but I think under $50 for sure? I don't like a lot of nicknacks so I didn't want a lot of shelving for more 'stuff'. The one cabinet on either side suits me fine and it was easier on the budget. I bought cabinets from where we purchased our kitchen cabinets from and DH made a top for it, we painted it to match the trim (which was matched to the cabinets). Built ins can get so pricey. I hope that helps.

Have you double checked all the dimensions? I just looked at the Kitchenaid website, and it looks like the model you describe is deeper than your current model; i.e., it will stick out beyond your cabinet. It also looks like Kitchenaid still makes the same size model you currently have. Why don't you want to buy the model that fits your space?