I’ve been lurking on these forums for a long time admiring everyone’s hard work. In May, my girlfriend and I bought our first house, (a mid 1980’s bi level with no basement). We are in the process of updating the place, and have made some good improvements since May, new appliances, paint, some new lighting, and cleaning the place up. But there is still a lot to do.

Now because it doesn’t have a basement, I really don’t have a good option for a home theater, or at least a dedicated one. So, I’m taking over the lower level “family room” for my media/game room.

The problem is that the room is shaped a little oddly, and while I currently have a sony 5.1 theater in a box combo, I want to upgrade this system to a better quality 7.1 unit in the future.

We want a sleek modern look to the whole house, and we like recessed lighting or at least modern looking lights other than globes. For instance, we have these in our kitchen.
http://www.ikea.com/PIAimages/54566_PE156678_S4.jpg

But I don’t want to redo the ceiling, is there a way of installing the recessed lighting into a finished ceiling?

The plan so far:
Remove carpet
Run speaker wires for 7.1 system
move cable input to final location of TV
Run wires for TV
Patch walls
Paint
Install lighting (recessed, or possibly sconces)
Install laminate flooring
Build or buy AV stand
Mount plasma TV
Buy furniture

I cant decide, nor do I really have the knowledge of the best way to set up this room for sound and viewing. the plan is for the room to be multipurpose, and be able to move the furniture out of the way for poker nights.

here is the basic layout of the room
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3091/3233942177_9510acbfd8.jpg?v=0

The light above the table has to go, it was left there by the previous owned, but unfortunately he wasn't kind enough to leave the pool table as well.and the table will easily collapse and be stored in the garage when not in use.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3497/3208038833_fce301bf10.jpg?v=0

the bar and the chairs in the corners will be going, the chairs will be stored in the shed and the bar will probably be burned unless i can find a good use for it.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3355/3208040827_ac260abf01.jpg?v=0

this is the seating my girlfriend and I really liked, but not so much the price tag.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3492/3233942279_a1d76d338d.jpg?v=0

I really wish I had a blank canvas to work with, but hopefully i can get it in our next place.

So any suggestions of the layout would be great. I'm pretty sure i don't want to go with a projector..yet anyway.

also any suggestions on places to look for modern looking theater seating would be great as well. We don't plan on keeping the place more than 7-9 years, so I don't know how much I should do to convert this into a game room that couldn't be easily reversed by the next owner.