Gear suggestions for tricky theater

Hey guys,

I figured someone can help me as someone may have experienced similar setups. We have a family friend that has a nice vacation house in Ft. Lauderdale, and since he's unable to sell it right now for obvious reasons, he decided to just keep the house and make it nice. A little background may help. He's a rags to riches guy that grew up poor in the 60's, went to law school, and is now hugely rich. That being said, he never experienced really great audio systems in his lifetime and is the type that owns countless Bose wave radios, one for every room that he wants sound in. Now he wants to put a home theater in this vacation house but also wants to use it for audio when he's just relaxing in the house. He's not worried about whole house audio right now. The problem with the house is it's an open, airy terrace-like house. The huge living room is open to the huge kitchen and above the kitchen is a little inside deck that is open to the upstairs. The ceilings above the living room are about 30 feet high. Thus, the dilemma.

It's just hard to get lots of speakers to a vacation house to audition. Obviously, since it's a vacation house, looks matter a little. No crazy looking Thiels or anything. For now, let's not worry about money, but not go overboard. While he could afford to put 7 Wilson Alexandria's for every speaker, he's not looking to do that (and that would obviously be overkill for him). I'm wondering if anyone has good suggestions. On the lower end of things, I was thinking perhaps a 7.2 Paradigm Signature setup with S8's in the front with Sunfire 250w amps and a Sunfire Theater Grand and something like some a pair of Revel or Rel subs. As far as amps go, I don't think he'll want to bother with differences between something like Sunfire vs. Levinson/Halcro/etc. I just don't know if the Paradigms could fill that space. Another more expensive thought was a Krell Lat1000 setup with similar subs.

These are all just starting blocks, but any help would be appreciated. I just need speakers that sound good in a large space like that.

Any speaker setup would be custom installed and some acoustic panels and slight room modification could be made so the issue right now is mostly speakers. Obvioulsy auditions would be ideal, but he's the type of person that likes things done without having to put in too much effort. And unfortunately, I would get no commission for helping (damn, would have been a nice bonus).

Thanks everyone.