thinking your a carpenter and all you use is a drill...

I never said it made you better, again... betraying your experience, I said it saved time. anyone who works for profit knows time is everything.

oh... you must just not do much work...

battery powered power tools are a godsend for working quickly without dragging extension cords around. The $120 investment into 2 batteries is inconsequential to thousands of dollars of power tools.

what do you base that on? can you list any other 5cell 5aH batteries for significantly less? I do some RC stuff, and a turnigy battery is $50 on the dot. but its got no battery gauge, not armored in a plastic case, just a xt connector.

There are knockoff batteries of course, which are half the price, but based on performance and teardowns, none are as advertised.

the 60v flex volt stuff... now THATS expensive.

batteries should be similar prices. right now amazon has the Milwaukee 5ah for 66 and dewalt 5ah for 73.

with a bit of patience, both can be had for $50-60 (I havent seen $50 since covid/inflation, but people still say $10/ah is the target, though I think thats in the past).

anyway, point is, the cost and hassle of the adaptor would definitely keep me using milwaukee batteries if I had Milwaukee tools.

water based poly is fine. acrylic paint is also waterbased. its fine

It will absorb the first coat, but itll seal it and that 1 exposure wont affect it.

You can make raise panel doors from MDF, and the paint seals the MDF (though you gotta sand the shit out of it after the first coat)

you ever drywalled before?

If not, not to judge, but theres zero chance youre gonna skim coat the entire wall and get a lvl 5 finish (thats what a lvl 5 finish is).

anything less is not level 5, because that means your just feathering out the thickness introduced by the tape, which is then by definition, not a dead flat wall

Plus, zero chance your wall was lvl 5 to begin with, so you'll need to "improve" that too.

Id grab a 4" knife and some spackle, and smear it on the hole. Id sand it smooth, and repeat that 2-3 more times. by not using tape, you wont be building any thickness on the wall that requires much feathering. A .5" hole doesnt need tape anyway.

If youre not satisfied with the result, you can still slap some tape on there and proceed to attempt a skim coat if you want.