Hmmm... You may cringe at taking something out of the box and flying it, but you'll cringe more when you drive the model you just spent 6 months building into the ground. I think you've got some misconceptions about this hobby. The route you're going you face the challenge of taking a bare bones kits and converting it into an aircraft that will actually fly. In order to do that you must build all of your control surfaces flat, complete the final assembly so that you incidences and alignment are correct, build light enough to actually fly, properly install the radio, and select and install the engine with virtually no experience. Then, if you make it this far, you need to learn to fly, and your notion of flying around 6' off the ground is the EXACT opposite of what you want to do. Trust me, a crash from 6' will destroy you plane. You'd be better off at 150' so you have enough altitude to recover from a mistake.

Now this is coming from someone that has NEVER assembled a prebuilt airplane and taught myself how to fly. As a consequence my first couple airplanes turned better in one direction than the other (poor alignment or warps) and ended up getting crahsed anyway. I did just about everything wrong a person can do getting started in this hobby, and frankly it's amazing that I'm still in it. You should really save yourself the heartache and get some experienced help from the start.