Wait, didn't I just get done having this conversation with the guy at the frat house?

You're over-complicating it by trying to make it a remotely-controlled system. The whole point of the receiver is so that you specifically do not have to do a remotely-controlled multi-room system.

Each room has its own receiver and it is controlled from that room. The speaker wires should go to a wall jack in that room, not to a central location. (This is how I have my receiver working, by the way, into some ceiling-mount speakers.) Since you're building it now, you could even put the network/phone jack next to the speaker jack.

The whole idea of the receiver is to have a small client in each room with only a network/phone jack to connect it. It's a completely new paradigm, and you're trying to apply an old-style system to it.