Unfortunately you're average spanner monkey won't be able to carry out the work to an acceptable standard
Easy tiger, dissing
spanner monkeys will offend me, I've been branding myself a spanner monkey for nigh on a decade now, and I wear the term as a badge of honour! Hell one of my colleagues started calling himself that until I reminded him that was "my brand".
Although, for the beenfit of
@Wills07 - Nodge makes some very good points, the K series engine's a bit peculiar when compared to most run of the mill stuff like fords etc, as it is essentially a high performance engine, I mean it was used in Lotus Elises and Caterhams for example. It's what is known as a wet linered block, which means instead of the block being a solid lump with cylinders being bored out of it, it's like a bath tub, and the cylnders are metal pipes that sit inside the block/bath, with coolant completely enveloping these "Cylinder Liners". The Cylinder liners are seated in sockets at the bottom of the block, above the sump, and seal against he cylinder head at the top. This design is good for performance engines as it allows much more efficient removal of waste heat*, but it complicates a head gasket job as whereas on a normal engine you can just throw a steel ruler acorss the deck and check it's true, in a wet liner enigne there is the possibility of the liners having been distubed, so there is a whole swathe of measurements need to be accurately taken to ascertain if he engine is suitable for rebuild. This contrasts strongly with a conventional solid block engine, you simply buff it to shiny, eyeball it with a steel rule, slap a gasket on it and torque down the head.
*footnote, the head gasket issue with the K series in the freelander is down to a poorly designed cooling package in the freelander, particulary the plumbing/thermostat, not an inherenet fault of the K-Series itself.
So yeah, I'd say it's worth finding a specialist, I'm a jazillion miles up the road from you so I can't recommend anyone, but there's "a good garage" thread on here where you might find someone. Also Nodge and or Andy might supply you with the checks to pass on to you mechanic?