Ah, I remember getting the stairs redone. They had 1990s vinyl on them, and we wanted non- slip carpet. I was smart enough not to do the carpeting myself, but surely I could strip it?
Turns out the vinyl was attached with pure fucking magic, and the nothing short of xenomorph blood was getting that shit off, apart from hard labour. So after 2 days of violence, I find out that they can't actually glue carpet to paint. They used to be able to, but the modern glue puts not killing the user over being convenient for me, which is fair. This wasn't true for the previous glue, which I had to burn and scrape off.
Unfortunately, unlike the vinyl, the paint too was very high quality. And thick enough to serve as a a staircase by itself, so after using some expensive goopy enzymatic paint stripper, and some good old fashioned harsh chemicals, I ended up sanding away the remaining paint over the next week.
It's been two years, and I think I finally vacuumed up the last dust.
Chiming in from Germany where stores close at 8 pm the latest. If I entered a home depot like store after 7 pm on a Saturday (you know, Sunday is for Church so no way any store is open) the employees would be killing me with their glace. So, I guess if you plan to emigrate and providing your childhood experience to your kids is important to you, Germany isn't the right destination.
I've got a buddy whose father is a handyman/electrician in Germany, and comes over to the US fairly regularly. He was astonished at how helpful hardware store employees (specifically Menards) are here, and his jaw almost dropped when they actually went with us to try and find an item.