A/V installation consultation services?!

We're building a new 3000 square foot home in 2013. Holy cow! I'm on information overload and I need some guidance. I have yet to find a comprehensive guide or DIY instruction guide on where to start.

I have no problem paying someone a reasonable hourly rate for phone consultation on where to begin! Any suggestions out there?

My contractor is fine working with us and will allow us to do as much or as little as we like during the construction. I have a few friends/relatives that are electricians and I have a feeling that we could wire the house ourselves.

For audio, it sounds like Sonos is the easiest choice (maybe not the most deluxe or the most cost-effective, but easy and reliable I've heard).

I need to have a 30-60 minute conversation with someone to know where to start and how to proceed. Suggestions ???

PS - I built my Home Theater 6 years ago based solely upon the help of AVS Forums members, so I have the utmost confidence in you guys!

Thanks!! Again, I know that there would be major variations depending on each company, but if I were to find someone local and hire them as only a CONSULTANT (not an installer), what would you expect a reasonable price/charge would be? Like $80/hour or like $400 for a one-time full consultation and plan ?? etc?

Thanks for your responses! No budget in mind. I'm fortunate in that I have enough resources to handle things if it gets expensive, HOWEVER, I also tend to get really into this stuff and would have no problem putting in the labor (and research) necessary to have a nice final outcome. I also tend to look for bargains and would rather spend my $$ in other areas that I'm less interested in putting my personal efforts.

Everything will be homerun to the mechanical room in my basement.

My main questions:

1. Is Sonos a reasonable option for the whole house audio? I'll have a zone in the "living room, kitchen, bedroom 1/2/3, master bathroom, study, outdoor deck, gameroom". (I might not install all zones at first, but will wire them with speaker wire for the future of course). All I'd need to do is run the speaker wire accordingly and decide later if I'll need to add amplifiers or not?

2. Gramin, why 5 runs of CAT6 to each TV location? This is one area that my knowledge is out-dated. If you'd rather not elaborate and could even point me in a direction of research, I'm happy to pick it up from your direction...

3. I wasn't planning to have a Control4 system setup myself, where the entire house is connected and automated, but I figured that I'd at least setup individual video streamers at each TV (to stream content from my central NAS drive).

4. For basic lighting and house monitoring automation, I was thinking that we could look into the basic options by Guardian and ADT. Is that silly and overpriced versus a self-contained system? We just want basic controls for our lights and garage door/etc, we're not too worried about extravagant settings. Unless of course, those settings could be had for a nice price.

If I'm in over my head, also feel free to tell me that I need to pay for a professional. I'm not sure what i'd decide, but advice like that could also be valuable... It's a $650k house and I'm a techy. I'd just rather not waste $10k-$20k on something that I could chug through myself!

Thanks!!!

Thank you so much for your input. I'm okay with Sonos being separate from everything else if it works really well. We'd just control it from our smartphones and tablets.

I'm more concerned about not making a silly decision about how to control the video. That's why I was thinking that I could just run enough CAT6 everywhere and use individual streaming boxes at each TV location to pull content from my NAS.

And then I was thinking the home lighting and security could be separate as well.... ?

When broken down like this, it doesn't sound that challenging, but I just don't want to ignore something major either.