Basic Multi Room Setup

[camcdonald1]

I want to have audio in almost every room of my house. I'm thinking I'll split the house into two zones by floor. There will be in ceiling/wall speakers in all rooms and a 5.1 home theater in the living room. Also, for each room I'd like to have a volume control mounted in-wall to override the volume for that specific room. I'm wondering what type of equipment I'll need to purchase so that I can accomplish this setup. To cover the two zones, I'll buy two Squeezebox duets. Beyond that, I'm looking for suggestions on how to configure these rooms - what types of recievers, amps, speaker selectors, etc. and how to connect them all.
Thank you,
A novice,
Chris (see attached diagram of my desired setup)

[SuperQ]

This seems like a fairly easy setup to take care of.

The first floor can probably be controlled by a single multi-zone home-theater receiver hooked up to power your surround system, and then the "second zone" output can be split off to the other rooms stereo speakers.

You can use something like this on each remote speaker pair. This will allow 2 channels to drive multiple speaker sets and locally control volume. You can get fancier ones with digital controls and infrared forwarding.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00009W3IN

For the second floor you can just get a simple 2 channel zone amplifier

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00026BQJ6

[camcdonald1]

I attached another diagram of how I am envisioning your suggestion (blue circles=speakers). Is this how I would set it up? I don't currently have any equipment, so I would be starting completely from scratch. For the "single multi-zone home-theater receiver" how many speakers in addition to the 5.1 could I connect here. And the same question for the "simple 2 channel zone amplifier" that you recommended, how many speakers could I connect to this?
If in the future I want to expand with more speakers, would this setup allow for expansion?

I appreciate your quick response and links to products - I hope this isn't insulting as I'm sure it is very basic stuff.

Chris

[SuperQ]

You probably wouldn't need a preamp connection from the zone-1 to the zone-2 amplifier.

Something like this can be used for the zone 1 amplifier:

http://www.usa.denon.com/ProductDetails/4560.asp

Basically you can use it as a 5.1 home theater amp, and it allows the 2 extra channels to be used as a second zone. That extra stereo pair should be more than enough to power your two first-floor secondary rooms.

Figure 30-40 watts of power per speaker pair from a good quality amplifier designed for zone use.

[peterw]

Have you considered using one Squeezebox per room? You could then group them in as many zones as you like. And if you're pulling cable, better to pull cat5e than speaker wire!

[camcdonald1]

PeterW - what kind of a setup would that entail? Exactly what equipment would I need to accomplish this with my desired setup?
Thanks,
Chris