The holiday bustle was underway Tuesday at the Ronald McDonald House of Detroit, where they were preparing for Santa's arrival at a Christmas party. Last week, the Detroit Police Department stopped by to decorate the tree and deliver presents.

There's been plenty of action in another part of the house the past couple of weeks - the site of the Pistons-Palace Foundation's newest "Live, Learn and Play" Center, which opens Dec. 20.

The former nursery with jungle wallpaper and empty shelves of a month ago ceases to exist. In its place, a Pistons fan's paradise, where Flip Saunders, Chauncey Billups and Tayshaun Prince never leave. Their life-size likenesses are on the wallpaper. Rasheed Wallace and Rip Hamilton each cover a window panel, and a panoramic view of the Detroit skyline completes the room's cosmetic transformation.

Tuesday, the walls' fresh new look was a formidable obstacle for the Dave Ugo and Eddie Hannaford, technicians for Great Lakes Entertainment Services, who were installing what amounts to a home-theater system. Cables for the television, cable box, VCR/DVD player, Nintendo Wii system and speakers were strewn across the floor and all leading back to one corner of the room near the dining room entrance. Hooking all the components up and mounting the 32-inch flat screen television was a two-hour job, Ugo said. With a disclaimer.

“Speakers are the hardest part,” he said. “You don't know what's in the wall, it's always a surprise.”

They couldn't go through the walls so they had to fish the cables around them - through them, in fact - to connect a pair of ceiling speakers with the multimedia hub, a black lockbox.

It’s not an unusual task for Great Lakes Entertainment Services, which does similar work in residential and professional installations. In fact, the Lake Orion-based service provider of home theater design and installation has worked with the Pistons-Palace Foundation on previous Live, Learn and Play Centers, including the replica PalaceVision installed at Pontiac’s Will Rogers Middle School in July. Eddie remembers working on it.

“I like working on those kind of projects a lot more than anything else,” he said. “I remember all the kids; they'd see it going up and they were so excited. It was pretty cool.”

There won’t be a PalaceVision this time, however, as the dimensions of the pizza slice-shaped room wouldn’t allow it. “They wanted to do a little [PalaceVision] in here, but we couldn't fit it into any of the corners and with the ceiling being too low," said regional sales manager Robert Watkins said, "so we decided to go with the regular 32-inch LCD ... on top of that we donated some speakers and an amplifier, so we'll have some nice stereo sound coming from the TV system."

In addition to the donated speakers and discounted prices on other equipment, including the 32-inch Toshiba Regza LCD monitor, Great Lakes Entertainment Services is also upgrading the House’s wireless Internet connection to reach the Live, Learn and Play Center.

“It's actually something we don't get a lot of, and I think Harry [GLES owner Harry Limauro] kind of likes doing that,” Robert said of the project’s philanthropic nature. “That's something we always look forward to doing, for a community like this.”

Eddie had a similar sentiment, preferring projects that will be enjoyed many kids rather than a single homeowner. “This actually means a little something to someone,” he said.

As any do-it-yourselfer will tell you, projects involving power drills and precise measurements can be held up by the seemingly most innocuous detail. This project was no different, as the cotton candy-like installation snagged the speaker cables as they were fished through the ceiling, pushing back the two-hour installation to three and a half.

After Eddie and Dave fished the cables through and mounted the television, placing shelves in the lockbox to hold the Wii and other equipment was all that remained. Except the shelves were longer than the lockbox by an inch. Approaching four hours on the job - double his initial estimate - and dealing with another unforeseen obstacle, Dave still sounded optimistic.

"I can see light at the end of the tunnel, which is good," he said. A look around the former nursery at the Pistons’ wallpapers and the rough beginnings of a state-of-the-art home theatre, and it’s hard not to agree.

"Of course, clean-up mode is good, too," he added, then redirecting his attention to the lockbox.

Over the next two weeks, the Pistons primary logo will be placed on the hardwood floor, surrounded by a table and chairs. The fine-tuning will be lead right up to the Dec. 20 unveiling. Thanks to Dave and Eddie, the heavy lifting is already done.