you can really buy a decent far eastern guitar for what you will spend on a cheap kit and additional bits and pieces to upgrade it.... plus you need to decide what your time is worth to you.
I try to estimate the amount of labor hours on every project I do before I start and then pad in a few extra hours for and 'learning curve' stuff or fixing mistakes I made when I was doing work while I was tired... whether its a partscaster build, amp repair project, whatever I try to balance my estimate of bench time versus how tedious or fun the actual work will be for me to execute. I look at my pay rate at my day job (desk work which is almost always tedious), and if my "fun-to-fuck-it" ratio does not favor fun I assume I am wasting money I could spend working overtime and making money instead of working on a guitar project for FREE and I add that to the cost of the project in question.
So if I estimate about 20 hours of tedious wiring and finishing work (or some similarly repetitive and detail orientedtask) and about 4 hours of setup work on a build, then I multiply that times (for the sake of argument lets say) $20/hour and add that to my total estimated cost.... if the work sounds more fun I do not add the cost in or I add it at a lower rate. So the basic assembly and setup work is relatively fun and easily done in small sessions whenever I have an hour to spare, lets say its worth half pay so 4x$12.5=$50, the wiring is tedious and best done in a marathonsession, so 20x$20=$400.... wow, so lets say my kit cost me $250, right? I also got a btter bridge for $100 and a setoff good pickups for $150. The project cost with estimated labor: $450 in my bench time + about $100 for the core kit + $250 in decent pickups and hardware = $800.
You can get a serious guitar off the shelf for around $800. It will surely be better finished than what you can build from a kit and its likely the wiring will be better.... plus instead of building it for hours on end you can spend your free time playing it. I will tell you that for a tele in particular the way to go is 'partscaster' purchased a piece at a time. Check out the Ebay store "stratosphere" AKA "reliable fender" for fender made guitar chunks, also check out USAcustoms and Warmoth.
I built my sunburst tele from a fender body and neck of my choosing and then added a wonderful rutters bridge and compensated 60s steel saddle, CTS pots, oaks grigsby switch, Hovland musicap, cloth covered solid core wire, and a pair of hand-made pickups wound exactly to my spec by a gentleman in Portland who makes some of the finest vintage fender-style single coils I've ever heard. I also wired everything my way, Gibson 50s style tone circuit and volume-tone-selector instead of selector-volume-tone... and I even got custom flattop barrel knobs with heavy knurl for easier pinky adjustment of controls courtesy the excellent grip. Total cost was about a grand including my labor, but the finished guitar holds up to a top-line USA Fender or entry level Custom shop model in quality, plus it has features that I cannot buy off the shelf from anywhere. I did not bother to finish it myself, I just bought fender parts with decently thin lacquer on them.
