Sure, but I suspect some guy building some home for himself in some tropical paradise has different construction needs than most of the folks here, including me

Sure, but I suspect some guy building some home for himself in some tropical paradise has different construction needs than most of the folks here, including me. We have snow in the winter for example, which changes literally everything. And then there is whole world of regulations for given country, Seychelles probably have 10% of the complexity and requirements of typical G7 country. Also, if that guy is doing electricity by himself he is a (dangerous) fool. As I said - it takes 10 professionals easily a year to build something. It simply does. Just check how their daily work looks like - its messy just like other types of projects, you have unforeseen problems, people drop sick or injured, suppliers can fail to deliver things on time etc. From IT world - the stuff I hack together in a week takes altogether to bring live 6 months easily, since initial dev is rather small part of it. So maybe adjust your expectations to reality, its not gonna adjust to you.