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The "means of production" is a very abstract and fundamental concept. I think its right for you to question it, and how it relates directly to you. Its a very general concept, and everything you are asking of of applies to is very specific. The means of production has been well defined it seems elsewhere in the discussion, but its basically "everything that is used in human production" which is the driving force of history from a Marxist/sorta Hegelian perspective. So it is a big deal.

But what is also relevant, is how production is defined, and namely who owns its products. You work in IT (so do I) so in that example you own your work laptop? That laptop is MoP, same as the painter tools, and you sell your product to the company, who uses it to run how ever millions of transactions. Or making those transactions possible for that company, integrating some new feature. So more specifically, those tools are Capital, which is an essential mean of production under capitalism. But a ton of the infrastructure for those transactions was publicly funded, paid for with taxes. But now most if not all of that infrastructure is privately owned.

So in that way you are like the painter, in that you sell directly the product of your labor to the capitalist. Both you and the painter are workers in the same way, but youre an intellectual worker vs he is a physical laborer. but the paint and personal items in your personally owned house is for your personal use, whereas the software you sell to a company is for commercial use, in effect the software is capital, whereas the paint on your walls is not. But if the painter painted the walls at your company's office, that would be capital. The painter "bought the paint with his own money"? But you are paying him, so you are buying the paint.