I’ve done fronts and rears on an old Escort before DIY (actually it might have been the shocks we did at one end but the principle’s the same).
I bought some spring compressors and with a lot of care and patience it was relatively easy to load them up evenly and rebuild the coil/shock assembly. You have to be really disciplined and not in a rush to use these in my view.
You also need to make sure the top and bottom of the springs is seated in the “cups” if you’re not buying a complete unit.
The ********** bit of the job was getting the bottom of the assembly back into the front hub as it was a blooming tight interference fit. We used two lump hammers if memory serves, one across the bottom of the hub as a target and then about 10-15 minutes of tapping the hub assembly gently upwards onto the bottom of the shock/spring assembly.
Edit: I should also say that we did manage to separate the strut assembly from the car without removing any ball joints etc., which did make it more fiddly getting the assembly out but was one less thing to worry about on reassembly. This is probably not possible on all cars.