re: Built-in home speakers - such a newb question

I had the same thing. Took a receiver and started trying the speaker wires one by one. Labeled each wire with the room and orientation. ie patio- north.

Then I bought a 4 zone speaker selector switch. One zone is outdoor, one is bar/den, one is kitchen/dining, the other is bed rooms. Plug approiate speaker wire into corresponding zone and put my receiver output into the switch input.

Viola. Done
I do not use them for surround sound. They are not that quality.
I’ve been researching how to set up a WiFi selector so I can change zones from my phone but no luck so far. They are expensive.

ETA. If your have sorround quality speakers in your tv room, you could just run those wires directly to the surround output of your receiver. The rest would go to the selector.