In my experience, trying to install OS X on a laptop is an exercise in frustration. I did it with Snow Leopard on a Dell Inspiron-1525, almost identical to a polycarbonate white MacBook of that time and one of the easiest machines to tinker with.
I read elsewhere that desktop computers are much easier to work with, but the OP is explicitly talking about portability and, in that case, it is just better to shell out the money to buy a MacBook... event though they get expensive really quick.
If you want a really nice hackintosh laptop with good build quality and great performance for the money you can't go wrong with this:
A second hand i5 HP ProBook with 4GB RAM. £126. Add to this a 120GB Samsung EVO SSD for £55 from Amazon, and a £6 wifi card from eBay. Less than £200 all in.
Everything works out of the box on this laptop except the wifi, which you have to replace (or use a USB adapter).
I configured one last week. Mavericks runs perfectly. Quartz Express, Sleep/Wake, all works.
I bought a used Dell Latitude E6520 because it was the only laptop I could find with a reasonable price that had a good full HD screen.
As a bonus, it has an i7.
I didn't want/need discrete graphics because hackbooks don't have discrete graphics support (yet?). The only thing I HAD to replace was the WiFi, but I upped the RAM to 8 GB. Other people have upgraded to 16 GB with no problems.
I read elsewhere that desktop computers are much easier to work with, but the OP is explicitly talking about portability and, in that case, it is just better to shell out the money to buy a MacBook... event though they get expensive really quick.