The problem is, if you own a "nice" house, you need very good skills to do many DIY home improvements, for them to actually look good enough to match the house. Otherwise, you are reducing the resale value of your house with shoddy-looking work.
If I owned an old cottage or something like that, I would be quite comfortable doing DIY work on it. It's a little bit like doing DIY auto repairs on a brand-new Acura TSX vs. a 2002 Honda Civic. The stakes are different.
Disagree. Cookie cutter newer houses which may look "nice" and have "nice" values (probably inflated) don't have the craftsmanship you are describing.
I think its quite the opposite. If you owned an old cottage with exposed hardwood trim, stained glass window, exposed hardwood stairs with a carpet runner, and custom built-ins it would be much harder to DIY improvements. That type of older house may also have older plumbing, older electrical, and possibly plaster walls, all of which will require more care and knowledge to DIY things than new electrical, plumbing or drywall.
Take for instance fixing a piece of trim that is an exposed hardwood vs. fixing a piece of trim that could be PVC/composite and some-shade-of-white. You can caulk over mistakes with white trim vs. trying to do a miter on exposed hardwood trim with not-square walls.
A comment made by a carpenter friend of mine some 20+ years ago still sticks with me.
"The only difference between me and the guy who goes to Home Depot and does it himself is that I get it right the first time. This isn't rocket science."
His entire value proposition is that he can do something at high quality and get it done quickly. Yours is that you can do something high quality because we assume that you can take multiple attempts until you get it right.
If I owned an old cottage or something like that, I would be quite comfortable doing DIY work on it. It's a little bit like doing DIY auto repairs on a brand-new Acura TSX vs. a 2002 Honda Civic. The stakes are different.