Frankly speaking you are better off with Phantom 2 than building yourself something similar in the first go for AP. You cant run before you can walk, so you will have to begin with something smaller and easier before making a copter that suits your purpose and hence you will be spending more time.
Anyhow just google "DIY quadcopter" and you will find enough info to go through. Also building yourself is the easy part, flying it is the harder part because you are at risk of losing everything you have built. I would suggest you to get something smaller such as mini quads which comes along with there own Tx, to get a feeler.
No definitive guides as such because most of the info is fragmented online, but something for you to start with
http://www.rcindia.org/multirotors/tutorial-how-to-build-multirotor-from-scratch/Finally you would have to read and reference and research a lot of threads online,to know the current trend as iamhuman suggested.
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