The level of skill depends on two important criteria. First, who is doing the teaching. Second, you need to want to develop your own skills, usually by practice and experience. My apprenticeship was an exeptional experience with all aspects of the trade covered from workshop, site work and design. That was in 1964 when I started mine, then they brought in day release for further education college and that was a real bonus. It enabled a lot of apprentices to gain City and Guilds and ONC, HNC who would not have bothered attending night school 4 nights a week. But I still spent the first 10 years or so after qualifying as a site operative, albeit promoted to foreman. The skill in your own hands never leaves you and taking pride in doing a job that you have in your own home. I think are some naturally gifted folk out there who can still turn their hand to a good job, but as everyone agrees, they need seeking out. The best idea is to take references and go and see their work. Any good tradesman should be proud to have some good references to display his skills.

Cheers Concrete

I think part of the trouble with "professionals" is too many generalists. So the person you employ to fit, say, your k****** may well be a skilled chippy but they will also do the plumbing, tiling and flooring etc with varying results. It appears to be rare that a team of varying trades pitches up except for big jobs.

Slight thread drift, but Wacky you may have had a lucky escape on solid wood worktops. We have solid beech and they have at least a dozen coats of the approved Danish Oil treatment. They are vulnerable to marks. For example Cif/Jif will burn through to bare wood and leave dark mark if an unseen drip is left unwiped. Other apparently innocuous fluids can "burn" through too.

In theory marks can be sanded out but you get light patch where you've sanded even after re-oiling.

Next time I will go for top-end synthetic worktops.