Sometimes it's worth paying an expert instead of trying to scrounge up every penny by bogging down my time.

Maybe you misunderstand what I'm saying here, I didn't do any work myself I paid my own contractors after closing on the house. In fact some of the contractors that I used were the ones who built my house! I got their cards and called them later on to do the exact same work cheaper by hiring them directly.

Builders rape you on price because people are usually too lazy to do the work on their own. In my case there were 2 or 3 upgrades I wanted to do, but then I discovered that the builder was up charging 300% so I just did them on my own within about a year or two of closing.