Doing basic drywall and paint isn’t rocket science, but getting a professional level fit and finish actually takes a lot of practice and experience. It’s also a completely different experience when you’re trying to match old specialty paints from a previous homeowner, blending repairs to match the wall texture, and other complexities that don’t show up in those basic YT videos. If you’re in a situation with untextured walls, known paint colors, simple repairs, and a forgiving eye, then it’s really not bad, but the complexities can add up quickly.
Even in the best cases, cutting into drywall all across the house to pull wire would be a project I’d try to avoid at all costs in an occupied home. The fast path still requires multiple days to go through all of the drying and re-application cycles to build up all the right layers, not to mention dust control to keep that fine dust out of everything you own.
Certainly, if you're looking for perfectly smooth walls, then you're never going to be happy regardless. My place is Santa Fe, which is perfect... it is supposed to be messy. But this is a place built in the 40's... nothing is perfect. Doing something perfectly would stand out even more.
If you want old paints to match, then just paint the whole wall. That's easier and probably the right solution anyway.
A good feathering job saves a ton of wasted sanding effort and drywall dust. When I ask GCs and tradespeople which job they would would never do themselves, drywall is far and away the most common answer. It’s the only job I regret doing myself.
Electrician is the answer I usually get, largely because if you do electricity wrong, you can kill yourself or burn down the house.
Since the house is old, it is plywood floors and they aren't even enough for vinyl. Going to have to learn how to fix that too. From what I can tell, it is basically just mud like on the walls... but portland cement on the floor.
I'm glad you had such an easy time of it, but cutting, patching, and matching is a pain in most homes I've done it in. And don't even get me started on lath and plaster.
Doing it down to the studs and all at once is definitely the easier way to do it. Small patches and piecework suck, but if you’re living in it, especially with others, you don’t always get a say in the matter.
Used this technique to rip out and then match a ceiling in a bathroom, and also to patch up work after some HVAC dudes blew part of a wall out for mini splits.
It was tough to learn as there is a knack, but paid off. Having good hand eye coordination pays off in many ways.
The most important part was learning from an experienced person: "No wall on earth is perfectly flat, you just want it to look flat." Good advice, especially in a town (Philly) where there are old houses with not a square corner in the whole place. :)
When the walls are off in the house is the best time to get anything done. Sometimes I don't even want to put the walls back on- for example, an unfinished garage with exposed studs is very convenient.
Every town in America has at least one, if not several Home Depot’s, Lowe’s, OSH’s, etc. and at least 75-90% of the traffic at any given time is private home owners, not contractors. Americans do a LOT of DIY.
There isn’t any real comparison anywhere else I’ve been able to find, and I’ve looked. Not as much in France, but Germany, Switzerland, Italy, India, Bulgaria (closest to having something like that), Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, etc.
Some areas where plywood would be preferrable for durability, like a garage, are often prohibited from using something other than sheetrock due to the fire risk. Probably not a big deal unless you have entire walls of it.
I'm not sure whether older houses are more maintainable by default, or just once you have rocked over some threshold of continuous occupancy, there there are sufficient layers of repair and rework that you just stop worrying about (for example) sawing through a floorboard. While I didn't have to mess with the walls, if I had, I'd just have torn down the existing plaster and redone it, like you say it's not that big of a deal
I've started plastering a few of my walls and after wasting a couple days doing a few square meters ended up hiring a couple guys to do the rest of the house. There is just no comparison in value.
Of course if I do something enough I can get good at it, the point of hiring someone is because I am not going to do it enough to get good at it.
Highly recommend Vancouver Carpenter on youtube, if you do want to go down that rabbit hole.
I wouldn't call this cheap :-)
Guess how much they make if you don’t pay them?
It’s better for everyone if someone who can make more money per hour uses that higher earning power to offload lower income tasks to people in those jobs.
The view I replied to implied it would be gross to pay someone to make your meal because it’s cheap.
Doing small repairs is easy enough that everyone should at least know the concepts involved.
It takes a lot of practice to be smooth enough at doing it to have a nice result over any large area before the concrete sets. It’s not the type of thing that benefits from going ‘hmm, maybe I should do it this way’ after you’ve started.
Also, it’s much, much easier to do as a small crew - easily 3-5x more productivity per person. Same as drywall. It’s not easy to do as a solo worker, even if you know the tricks.
In my very limited experience, many textures are often harder to make look right than flat surfaces. I think I am sensitive to texture variation, because with textures I notice mistakes and I often notice where alterations have been made.
Either way, your Santa Fe look is irrelevant to the topic of fixing problems in walls when they are not textured like yours.
Plaster walls on wood studs is a lot harder, and plaster over brick or concrete is impossible.