Sonidos,
Memories of Austin, let's see.....if you were at the Elvis concert in 1977, I may have you on film. I was a pro photographer at the time, (hobby), and was priveliged to get tickets to one of his last ever concerts and have many photos....I went back in 1995 after my dad passed to take care of his business and whew...it's a different place now, fast & expensive! Ever remember the "Vulcan Gas Company" on Congress ave @ 4th? (Late 60's). I guess you never attended at the ripe age of 7 or 8. Those were the hippie days and I was a regular there......How about hippie hollow? I'm a co-founder of that unique entertainment site on Lake Travis. I beleive it's still open and I'm not receiving royalties from the county because they are making bucks off of it. Ironically, they are the ones we were fighting to get it going!!!!
Back on topic here.....yes when you get ready I would suggest that you take the route of a DIY already designed and tested cabinet and speaker design. They come with the cabinets assembled or not, drivers, pre-designed and built crossovers, and you get the joy and fun of assembling them. There is a whole lot more to just slapping in a couple of drivers into a cabinet and thinking they are going to sould great, cause they won't. I learned the hard way as usual. I have many rebuilds in mine and way too much money.
Their plans and kits have been designed by well known speaker builders who have been at it a whole lot longer than I have so they already have theirs sounding at their best. My center speaker is one of the finest I have ever heard and I have plans available on my website for it that I provide for free. Drivers and materials will run $800 to $900 smackers though, but darn well worth it. As the high end speaker designers do, I just got through re-designing another crossover for that center speaker because I thought it needed tweaking, and boy what a difference it made with just a few hundred hz changes in the band pass region. I also changed the tweeter portion of the crossover to a 3rd order for a sharper roll off and lowered it's frequency. The system can be seen on my website.
I'm always here to help and answer questions.
Looking forward to seeing any of the projects you tackle!
Mike
p.s. Here is a link to some of Hurricane Ike's damages:
http://www.tpicks.com/