Some background: Right now I have my home theatre receiver driving the 5.1 setup in the kid's playroom/home theatre room as well as driving a set of speakers on our deck outside. The playroom has a door that leads out onto the deck.

I would like to wire some additional speakers into the adjacent family room so that I could have music in both rooms and the deck. I would also like to have them set up into different discrete zones so the kids could watch movies in the playroom and I can still listen to music in the other rooms.

Am I going to have to pay a ton of money to get this done? I got a quote from a local Tweeter store and they quoted me a around $8000 to wire a control 4 system (new receiver, amplifier, speakers, and audio in the dining room as well). The components are not that impressive in the system and the biggest part of the cost is setting it up. I am going to get some additional quotes but was wondering if anyone else had experience in setting this type of system up and what I should expect.

get yourself an additional 2 channel integrated amplifier or receiver (used from ebay is a good way to save money) and have the pre-out/zone 2 out feed from your existing receiver (or the record-out feed if it has no pre-out) to the 2 channel amp. You can also connect other sources of course (iPod, TV, CD changer, DVD player) to aid the Zone 2 requirement should your existing reciver not have a Zone 2 output.

If you have crawl space in the attic you may be able to complete the wiring yourself. Just drop the wire down to where ever is convenient to place a wall bracket with speaker terminals on it (available at HD, Lowes, Radio Shack etc) and Bob's yer uncle.

Could cost you less than a few hundred smackeronies. Where you get your speakers is your call as I'd recommend listening to them before you buy them rather than just buying a set because they were at a good price and your acquaintance recommended them.

Alternatively you could just buy an iPod and an iDock, load the iPod with tunes and stick it in the room where you want music. I did that for the kid's room recently and it works out nicely. Saved me running extra wire and adding confusion with the existing gear for the other users.

Eight grand? Were they offering Krell gear and Linn speakers? That's nuts. Tweeter just filed chapter 11 so doing business with them may not be a particularly wise move right now, regardless of price.
No wonder they are going out of business - quoting the highest price without actually qualifying the customer is going to have their clients walking fast.

You should start looking at receivers to see which ones meet your needs. You can purchase that yourself.

Then look at the yellow pages to find people to do the wiring and supply the speakers

I asked the guy to price out a few options for me (high, medium, low) but all he ended up quoting me was the high end option and that annoyed me. This control 4 system allows you to integrate lighting, heating, home theatre etc. and does leave a lot of room for expansion but I don't think I am going to use any of that stuff. The main room itself was going to be $5000 and the only thing I was getting as far as equpment was an $800 Sony receiver and the control 4 system.

I'll be looking elsewhere.

which begs the question; why would he suggest a surround receiver?
A 2 channel version would cost less and do a better job. I'd use someone else if you can.

The current one is at least 10 years old, just plain dolby pro logic. The set up was using one receiver to pipe music in all of the rooms simultaneously. One of the rooms does have a surround sound speaker set up already in place.

It was a total of 8K for a new reciever, the control 4 system, 1 or two remotes, bookshelf speakers in the family room ($320), inwall speakers in the dining room, 1 speaker in the kitchen and of course all of the wiring etc.

as it's not advertised

I'd bet, though, that a LOT of that $8K is labor.

As Rubberduckie said, I wouldn't be buying anything from Tweeter right now. Especially something that you may need support on in the future.