Home of the Year Project Profile
- Name & Location: Timber Retreat, Medina, Minnesota
- Integrator: Admit One Home Systems, Edina, Minnesota
- Award: 2026 Home of the Year, Best Strange & Specialty Space, Bronze
The design for Timber Retreat called for a television in the primary living space, but no commercially available mounting solution met both the interior design goals and the functional needs of the room. The task of developing a bespoke solution for the client fell to Admit One Home Systems, who, in tandem with interior designer Brooke Voss and Eull Woodworks, built a custom TV frame mount made to look like an artist’s easel.
Proving an unconventional TV mount at full scale
While a conventional wall mount was feasible, Admit One determined anchoring the display permanently to one wall would have clashed with the homeowners’ desire to have the screen serve several seating areas and stay visible from the kitchen. It also would have broken up the clean composition Voss had established.
In testing, the team mounted a 65-inch Samsung The Frame TV to a borrowed artist’s easel and built a working prototype to demonstrate in the home. The prototype then became a full-scale design and an engineering exercise that validated viewing height, rotation, furniture proportions, circulation, and sightlines.
A TV stand engineered to look like a handmade easel
Once the concept was approved, Eull Woodworks engineered a custom easel that supported the top-heavy display and concealed power, signal distribution and the television’s One Connect cable inside the structure.
Every mechanical and integration decision disappears behind the look of a handcrafted easel. The finished piece also rotates to serve both the living room and the kitchen and stays visually consistent with the surrounding furnishings.
A fully integrated endpoint behind the furniture
Behind the easel sits an AV endpoint designed specifically for this home. The television connects to an AVPro Edge media-over-IP distribution platform, which gives the display access to every video source in the house while keeping it visually independent. Integration with an ELAN control system and architectural audio lets the easel television function as part of the home’s larger entertainment ecosystem.
Equipment list:
- Video & Displays
- Samsung Displays
- Sanus TV Mounts
- AVPro Edge Media-over-IP Video Distribution
- Audio
- Sonance In-Ceiling Loudspeakers
- Sonance Speaker Adapters & Grilles
- Control & Automation
- ELAN Handheld Remotes
- Infrastructure & Prewire
- RG6 Quad-Shield Coaxial Cabling
- Cat6 Network Cabling
- Distributed TV Prewire
- In-Ceiling Speaker Prewire
This project is part of our coverage for the 2026 CE Pro Home of the Year Awards. Presented annually at CEDIA Expo alongside the BEST Product Awards, the Home of the Year Awards represent the best of the best smart home innovations within the CEDIA channel. Check to see when the next submission window is open in case you have a project you would like to submit and don’t want to miss your opportunity.
