Time well spent! It looks great!
It gets easier with practice! Though it never got to be ‘exciting’ part of modelling for me. You might want to check some of the addons in our community wiki here WIKI - Free Blender-related tools and addons for addons that helps the process a bit…
I don’t think CBC course goes in depth here (someone please correct me if I’m wrong), but environment course does for sure…
I like it very much, especially how you blended in the board with environment!