I'm not a licensed A& P mechanic, but I play one on TV. Actually, I'm just a maintenance-involved owner who spends quite a bit of time hanging around the shop swinging wrenches on my Cessna 310, and I get to see a lot of other airplanes coming through the shop. I've concluded that most light planes are rather poorly maintained, and many are in a truly shocking state of disrepair.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/ownership/getting-decent-aircraft-maintenance