Tom’s Networking has a nice three part series on building your own quality home network.
But, before you proceed on to the series, two things of note:
1. Here, ‘network’ means the internet plus the ability of all devices in the house to seamlessly connect with each other - the sofa talking with the toilet, if you will.
2. Home automation is outside the purview of this ‘How-to’ series.
Proceed to the series