Building a Home With 5.1 Prewire--Need Advice (May Be Too Late)

I may be a bit late on this one as the builders are installing insulation and drywall this week, but I still may be able to salvage this one. I had 5.1 surround prewire installed in the house. The builders decided to put them in the ceiling. After doing some research, 10 out of 10 people said this wasn't optimal. However, I'm not a huge AV geek and I'm not building a basement theater or something, so I think this can be salvaged. I did my research after I approved of the surround locations. In hindsight I would have put the fronts and centers on the walls.

At any rate, I'm going with the in-ceiling speakers with the directional tweeters. I'm looking at Polk RC80i's for the LR and Surrounds. However, my issue is with the center channel. I'm still going to put this in the ceiling, but should I get a special speaker for the center channel or can I get away with another RC80i? What do you recommend. Yes, I'm stupid for signing off on in-ceiling speakers, but that's water under the bridge and I'm not a handy man although the speakers are close to the wall and if the cable is long enough I can just cut a hole in the wall and place the speakers there.

So guys, how can I salvage this debacle? Can good speakers make up for the issue? Should I invest in angled speakers instead of directional tweeters? What should I do about the center channel. My budget is flexible since I have other priorities on day one when we move in so the HTS will be a later project and I'll just save up based on the recommendations. Just know that I'm not a hardcore multiple thousands of dollars kind of guy. So maybe I'm willing to spend around $1k for speakers and a receiver. Also, should I invest in a floor or wall-mounted subwoofer? Thanks in advance.

They're putting in the insulation and drywall now and I already signed off on it. Speaker recommendations, please?

So I take it there's no reasonably priced brand of speakers that will at least give me acceptable sound?

I know where are the runs are and if the bundled wire is long enough I may be able to pull it down to the wall since the left front and right front are near corners. The center channel is an easy fix since there's a conduit for the the TV since it's above a fireplace and I can't put any AV equipment above the fireplace. I'll just pull the center speaker wire through the conduit which comes out near the jack with all of the AV connections.

This all depends on how the finished ceiling looks. If there are wall plates covering the prewire locations I may just concede quality in favor of aesthetics.

I doubt the forum can help give me construction and dry wall skills!

The reason I opted for the prewire is so that all I had to do was cut holes for the speaker and clean up the drywall dust. I'm not looking to patch drywall, mud, sand and paint. I'll try to shoot an e-mail to my project manager to see if he can have the front speakers moved to the wall. Thanks for your help.

Makes sense. Just called him and he's going over there today to try to move them. Turns out that they just started stacking the drywall today. Left front and center speaker should be fine but the right front may be a problem if the cable is too short to reach the wall.