Noob question about Android

Question

I have a Sprint HTC EVO 4G and the Spring Galaxy S4. I am fairly well versed with Linux in the PC/Server world with compiling, developing, and installing, but I am a noob to the Android world.
I have used Cyanogenmod on my Evo before, but I am still not 100% happy with it. I would like to compile and install my own pure stock version of Android with the Google Play Store app so that I can install only the app and programs I want and need.

Can someone tell me how to go about compiling the stock Android source code into a ROM in order to put on my phones?
Is doing something like this fairly easy to accomplish with a couple of days of tinkering? Or is something like this a massive undertaking with lots of complexities with drivers, software packages, kernel modules, etc, etc, etc?

Answer 1

Neither of your devices are supported in AOSP. In addition, Google applications arent available for AOSP builds.

Answer 2

Cyanogenmod has instructions on how to build their distribution from scratch, and they support the Galaxy S4. You could follow those instructions, and skip the parts you don't want to include. You will have the get the Google Play binary using the method they use to get all the Google apps that aren't available as source code. Google Play is one of those apps.
I've built Cyanogenmod from source, and I've used it extensively on my phone. What you're trying to do seems possible to me. Learning to build from source is not easy, but it can be learned if you're persistent.