It's over kill for what he wants, but that would work.
www.smarthome.com has some nice X-10 items, and links to manuals for the products.
In my boss's house over the years, I've connected over 200 X-10 devices or devices wired to relays (some even with dimmers) connected to a computer (via a relay board connected to a parallel port that I used to sell commercially in the mid 80's). He can look at the temperature in every room, turn vents on/off, turn almost every light in the house on/off, check for motion in every room, his central vacuum turns-off when the doorbell or phone rings, light in his foyer turns on automatically when you ring the doorbell to make the visitor think there's someone home, automatically dim lights when he starts the DVD player, one master button beside his bed that turns all of the lights off at night and closes the garage door for convenience, another button to turn all of the lights on for security, control his MP3 jukebox, control most of his ceiling fans, and most of the devices in his house that have IR receivers via lirc.org's software. It's all controlled through web pages so he can use any computer connected to the Internet, a couple touchscreens he has in house, or even his Treo phone. Some of the items, like turning lights and motion detectors on and off are done automatically by the computer depending on the time of day.
Sigh, and I still can't find a tech-related job.z