Hi Crosshill,
My first advice would to speak with an agency as soon as possible! If this is something you want to pursue you need to get onto it asap and not dordle! I dont know if you have spoke to an agency already but having a simple conversation with them will give you all the answers that you have at the moment and this will put you in a good position to see if this is going to be possible and of the different options you could have. I have no problem in recommending Overseas Emmigration Services (OE) based in Edinburgh, they are great! Ask for Laurence.
Thankfully we decided to ring this agency at the right time (end of Jan last year) and we pushed ourselves to get our application in before the July 2011 deadline when the points system changed. With their great service and us being right on the ball and trying to be ahead of the game with the paper work we had our applicaion in by may well inside the deadline! In WA Painters were on the list so we went for state sponsorship with WA as we were thinking of Perth anyway although not totally convinced by WA, but no other state had Painters on the wanted list. I dont know if its on the skills list anymore for any state but the agent will tell you this over the phone. I received my 176 skilled migrant visa in september but could of probably had it a couple of months earlier as we were waiting for our second child to be born to have medicals and we live in the isle of man so we had to travel to the Uk to have our medicals. So it can be all done in a short space of time!
Anyway i have gone on abit but hope this helps and if you want to know anything more specific just ask, no probs!
Good luck and go for it, it was this time last year we made the phone call and it was well worth it!
Ste