Yes, the posts have slowed, things are getting ready for City of Chicago Inspection.  Lots of loose ends are wrapping up, like the kitchen backsplash:

Doors to close the coffee bar, at long last: 

...and let not forget about the cool cabinet-mounted controller for the ceiling-embedded speakers, below.  The Crestron equipment that power the speakers is working out pretty well - but was a challenge for my "I can hack anything and make it work" mentality.  The equipment is really first quality stuff. BUT! Even though the head unit I purchased, the discontinued Crestron  "Adagio AES"($200! what?!) was supposed to be a Crestron unit built for residential OOTB setup by homeowner, it turns out it was only 'sort of' OOTB. Lots of tinkering, fiddling, google querying had to be done here before it could be considered to be fully set up.  For instance, I would have been fine with a remote control and an IR send/receive eye to control basic functions, but Computer says noooooooo that requires special Crestron programming code to be added to both the unit and the remote. In short, that means 'Not going to happen'. Fortunately the backup plan of using a Crestron APAD device, shown below, was plug and play. No programming required. 

In the end, it works great.  The Adagio AES Head unit has plenty of power to drive 5 stereo pairs of speakers, and does easy switching, grouping, and individually set volume levels for each room pair.  Source media is what ever is being 'cast' to the  Google Chromecast Audio streamer (get yours now, they were just discontinued as well and $20 is a great deal for a network streamer with an optical digital out) connected via the mini toslink optical digital out to a Schitt Modi 2 Multibit DAC and then into the Crestron AES head unit for distribution to the various room speakers.  Spotify never sounded so good, and higher quality streams the likes of Linn Radio really shine.  

Speaking of Speakers - here is a link to the ones I installed.  The Micca Series  (8 inch in-ceiling) from Amazon was recommended by a friend of mine, as a cost effective option that he had used in the past.  I have to agree, I was actually quite surprised at just how good they sound.  A very respectable low end, and the pivoting, "aim-able" tweeter really makes for a full, rich, tonally balanced sound at the spots(s) you are typically seated/working/standing.  Considering that this is largely intended as a background music system and not something for critical listening, all of this turned out to perform so much better than I had anticipated.  People actually comment on how good the music sounds. 

Is my HiFi Geekfactor showing yet? hahaha some of you are laughing right now.  

Let me just drive this home for sure.  Below is a pic of the Master Bath steamshower ceiling. The black square is one of two steam/sauna rated wet area speakers from Mr. Steam. They too are driven by the Chromecast Optical Out>DAC>Amplifier, but this time it is not part of the main house Crestron system, giving the user the choice of listening to the whole house program or choosing one from a personal device or asking Google to play something else from Spotify.

Below, the DAC-Amp, From Micca, is a tidy little amp just for driving the shower speakers. It's in the linen closet next to the shower stall.This isn't supposed to be some high end audio thing going on here, its a shower stall after all.  But when you are hanging out in here for a 20+ minute steam, it's pretty nice to have some music to listen to.  If you're wondering about all this techno-speak around DACs and optical connections, lets just say there is a pretty vast sound improvement going this way versus a direct connection via a headphone jack, particularly when streaming digital music. It's not terribly expensive or complicated to set up and - to me anyway - is the only way to go in 2019. 

Also in this closet is the steam unit.  It was a good addition, and does its job well.