Chris Wyllie has had his share of tough missions. As a Navy SEAL from 1994 to 2000, he was dispatched to the Persian Gulf, where he drove high-speed cigarette boats, supervised military electronics, and gathered photo intelligence. But nothing Chris encountered there would prepare him for the custom installation he'd supervise at the Kwok/Williams duplex apartment in New York City's Chelsea district. It would be a job tainted by scandal, infused with urgency, and requiring the ability to forge détente. Plus, it would be run by two savvy — and very detail-oriented — taskmasters.

In 2004, Chris launched his Long Island-based install shop, S.E.A.L. Solutions — as in Security, Electronics, Audio, and Lighting. And late last year, he received a desperate phone call from Jeffrey Williams and Jimmy Kowk. Their home renovation was well underway, employing a team of lighting designers, electricians, construction folk, and a custom installer, who was supposed to set up a projection system, multizone audio, a media command center — the works. Only thing is, halfway into the job, the installer took Jimmy and Jeffrey's money and ran. As in absconded. (More on him later.)

Even if that installer had stuck around, the project was already quite a challenge. Way before any thought would be given to auditioning speakers, there was the dilemma of the apartment itself.

Located on the second and third floors of a 112-year-old, seven-story building — a piano factory until 1981 — the Kwok/Williams co-op was quite crap-tastic, suffering from (among other things) warped floors, boxed-in alcoves, angled ceilings, and a centrally located staircase that wasted lots of valuable space. (The staircase would later be moved flush to a wall to "open up" the apartment.)

Jeffrey and Jimmy wanted their one-bedroom (and two-bath, one-office) apartment to be hip, cool, and high-concept. They envisioned it as a stage before a performance, one that could adapt to any kind of spectacle — everything from dances to cocktail parties to movie screenings — by way of modular furniture, chameleon lighting, and an invisible (until needed) A/V system. Since they love to entertain — whether that means inviting over family or friends, throwing parties, or hosting 50-guest charity bashes — they needed an apartment that would be up for the challenge of any kind of occasion. That would translate into multicolor LED lighting fixtures set where ceilings meet walls, a four-zone, two-floor audio system that allows for different music choices throughout the household, and a video projector shining onto a 13-foot-wide retractable screen.

Oh, and did I mention that Jeffrey is an architect at the firm BBG-BBGM (he designed the Bangkok Peninsula Hotel, among other things) and that Jimmy is in real estate? That means they both have a good handle on how installations should go, which in turn meant they'd be very hands-on throughout the process.

"I was looking at this as a challenge," says Chris Wyllie, recalling his thoughts upon realizing what he'd gotten himself into. "I don't believe there's anything I can't do. I think that's because of the Navy SEAL field training I received: They push you to the outermost limit of human capacity."

It was two days before Thanksgiving 2006 when Jeffrey contacted Chris. (Jeffrey found him through a referral from Smart Home, the source of the project's lighting.) That "other" installer had by then designed the system and disappeared. Remembers Chris: "Jeffrey said, 'I have a very bad feeling about what just happened. I don't think they did anything correctly. Can you come by?' " And so Chris arrived at the apartment, only to quickly learn that the project needed some major rewinding before it could move forward.

"I came in just to see what the scope of the work was," says Chris while he's putting some finishing touches on the installation. "There just wasn't enough wiring for what they proposed — at all. And I realized they were already about 80 to 90 percent sheetrocked."

Looking at the previous contractor's proposal, Chris found some other bright-red flags. "Let's just say he picked out some very interesting products," he notes. Electronic case in point: a Motorola A/V receiver. "It was like, 'My God, Motorola makes a receiver?' I think I've only seen one other before, on eBay or something. So we came in and started rewiring. We tore out everything and started pulling."

"Ugh — he saved our ass!" interjects Jeffrey as he passes by.

"We pulled some sheetrock down and added a ton of wires," continues Chris. "And we brought everything into this tiny media closet," he says, opening the door to a wooden nook behind the fireplace, where all the gear is stacked.

"That's the size of my first apartment in Manhattan!" exclaims Jeffrey from the kitchen.

The project had a number of unique challenges for Chris. First, he found himself in a new installer/client dynamic: "With my previous customers, I usually said, 'This is the design,' and they'd go, 'Okay.' " But Jimmy and Jeffrey both designed and managed the project.

"We concepted everything," Jeffrey explains. "But we didn't have the technical expertise to execute it. And the team had to understand our concept and what we were trying to achieve. Everybody on the team came to understand it, and they exceeded our expectations."

"If I give Jeffrey and Jimmy a spec sheet, they pull it apart and ask me for another one," says Chris. "Every bit of the way, they were, 'Why are you suggesting this?' So then I had to come back and give them my reasons. And Jimmy was researching everything. Whenever he read about something or saw something on the Internet, he'd say, 'Well, I saw this. Why can't we use it?'"

"We were very difficult," admits Jeffrey.

"I'm not saying difficult," Chris jumps in. "We had a lot of open communication between us."

That communication included the written type, too — pretty much daily. The S.E.A.L. team would arrive at the Chelsea co-op to find notes from the owners in red marker taped to various surfaces. On this particular day, a half-dozen or so pages hung in the apartment, with messages like, "There is a most disruptive beep sound [beep beep . . . beep beep . . . ] about every 15 minutes. I cannot find the source. Help, please. " (It turned out to be coming from either the microwave or the dishwasher, and it stopped as mysteriously as it started.)

Still, Chris feels this open-forum approach helped ensure that the installation would turn out well. "Jeffrey and Jimmy were such an important part of determining the ultimate design of the house."

"Chris is very good," adds Jeffrey. "We're very process-oriented. We needed to test everything, and we would have meetings and talk about it. He's been very accommodating."

And not just with Jimmy and Jeffrey. "The concept was a big challenge that necessitated getting together with all the different contractors," says Chris. "There were a lot of ideas that one contractor would say can't happen, but then I'm supposed to make them happen on my end. It was a little challenging finding the right components to interface with everything."

Speaking of which, some of Chris's obstacles were actually the normal, geeky kind. Trying, for instance, to get a Microsoft-powered media server to play nice with iTunes songs, so the guys would be able to transmit music from their iPods over the sound system. (Ultimately, he found a way to "trick" the system into accepting the AAC files.)

With the installation completed, the Kwok/Williams stage is set for whatever kind of show they want to put on. The living space blends the aesthetics of club lounge with boutique hotel — all very NYC, all very of-the-moment. Whites and silvers merge with zebra-wood floors and the occasional shimmering wall. And the beaded effect of those walls is highlighted by the Color Kinetics LEDs shining down them. The lights can be set to any color, rotate through a palette of hues, or show off all the colors at once, as a rainbow.

The LEDs also come into play during movie time. The Kinetics behind the huge roll-down Da-Lite screen can be set to glow on the white Draper blackout shades (azure seems pretty effective here), creating a Philips Ambilight kind of thing.

Splashing the image across that screen is a JVC 1080p D-ILA projector, which Chris says is an excellent value (it lists for $6,295), offering blacks he finds very impressive. (For the bedroom, Chris went with a Sharp 46-inch LCD HDTV, citing its clarity, brightness, deep black levels, and all-around "magnificent" picture.)

As for the audio (pumped through Klipsch ceiling speakers — the winners in a sound audition), Jeffrey and Jimmy appreciate the convenience that a four-zone system provides. "Because we have the whole-house audio system, it's very enjoyable," says Jimmy. "When you walk around the apartment, there's no break in the music." And the tunes also won't frazzle the nerves of the neighbors, no matter how loud they're played, since Chris and his team acoustically isolated the apartment.

Jimmy and Jeffrey have been using the home entertainment and lighting systems to their fullest without encountering any problems. They've embraced the use of Samsung Ultra Mobile PCs as system controllers and love it that their media-distribution system means they no longer have to wade through their 4,000-odd CDs to cull tunes. Dare they say it was all worth it?

"Nothing can prepare you for the stress of renovations," declares Jeffrey. "I used to have hair! We were unbelievably organized, we had a thorough set of drawings — we actually knew what we were doing. And yet the process is one of the most brutal things that I've ever been through. I mean, you're dealing with residential contractors and subcontractors. It's not for the faint-hearted. But I think we're at a point where, after all the hard work, we can really enjoy it and be proud of it. And just the few times we've had friends over so far, I think the reaction is — people are in disbelief, actually."

In the heat of renovation, Jimmy and Jeffrey were too busy to pursue the installer who ripped them off (though they did contact lawyers, the police, the Better Business Bureau . . .). Believe it or not, the guy hasn't dropped out of sight: He still answers his phone and sports a Web site. But now, "As soon as the dust settles on all this," concludes Jeffrey, "we definitely want to pay our friend a visit." So where does somebody have to go for some custom-installation justice?

Equipment List

JVC DLA-RS1U 1080p three-chip D-ILA projector Auton motorized projector drawer Da-Lite 159-inch (diagonal) Advantage Electrol screen Sharp Aquos LC-46D82U 46-inch 1080p LCD HDTV (bedroom) Peerless flat-panel-TV wall mount (3) Klipsch CDT-5650 ceiling speakers (front LCR) (2) Klipsch CDT-2650 ceiling surround speakers Klipsch RW-5802 in-wall subwoofer Klipsch RSA-500 subwoofer amplifier (4) Klipsch CDT-2650-SC ceiling speakers (entertainment area, kitchen, master bedroom, master bath) (9) Dynamat Dynabox acoustic back boxes Yamaha YSP-1100 Digital Sound Projector (bedroom) Denon AVR-4306 7.1-channel digital surround receiver Denon DVD-1930CI universal DVD player Russound CAS44 four-zone audio-distribution system Scientific Atlanta 8300HD high-def DVR/cable-TV tuner (2) Samsung Q1 Ultra Mobile PCs (used as system controllers) Universal Remote Control MX-900 remote Universal Remote Control MSC-400 master system controller Dell XPS 710 personal computer (as media server) Furman Elite-15 DM power conditioner Global Caché GC100 network IR interface (2) Key Digital HDMI Blasters D-Link DIR 615 Draft-N Wi-Fi router (28) Insteon light switches (2) Color Kinetics iPlayer 2 lighting controllers (5) Draper motorized blackout shades LifeWare 2.0 software

S.E.A.L. Solutions
631-877-SEAL
homesealsolutions.com

Photo Gallery
More Installations
Back to Homepage
What's New on S&V