I'm going to start a new thread detailing my experience, but between researching the job, getting stuck trying to remove the clips, driving around to find just the right type of pick, and actually being hunched over the engine doing physical work, I'd say I have at least 12 hours of work into it so far, and I'm not yet finished. But like any difficult project, if I had it to do over, I bet I could knock it out in 1/4 the time.

As far as my question of the criticality of the glycerin, I replaced the valve cover gasket on my daughter's 04 325i back in July, without coating the gasket with anything (the youtube video didn't mention anything about it). Since this job was about 1/100,000,000,000,000,000th as complicated as the job on the X5 V8 (you guys with sixes have no idea how good you have it...), I think I'll yank the valve cover off this car and see how the gasket is faring without the glycerin. If it's already stuck pretty tight, I'll do the X5 passenger side over and add the glycerin sooner rather than later. If is comes of easily and is still nice and supple, I'll wait till I've recovered from the X5 job, after all the physical and emotional scars have healed...

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2003 X5 4.4i
1992 Porsche 968
2007 328i
2014 Subaru Forester XT