The shrink wrap and braided sleeve are as I mentioned, options to make the cable look pretty. That being said, those items also require a degree of DIY ability. However, what requires no ability, only the confidence that you can wield a steak knife (wire stripppers work best, but I'm assuming you have no tools).
I do not want to try an get you to do anything you are not comfortable doing, and maybe if I get my act in gear, I can submit something for posting which details the steps and breaks down the cost of building a nice looking speaker cable out of heavy gauge cable readily available at most hardware stores. ( And add some touches like the shrink wrap and braided sleeving, etc.).
The only advantage of these cables is their cost. The ones I've made so far have capacitances between 24 (at 10000 Hz) and 38 pF/foot (at 100 Hz). Inductance is reasonable at about 0.25 uH per foot. Rs varies from 0.003 at 100 Hz to 0.018 at 10000 Hz. Not much better, and probably worse than 10 gauge zip wire. But they are big and thick, and will impress the neighbors (if they see them).
The other situation I see is that I made my cable using a 10/4 cable were each 10 awg conductor was made of 658 strands of 38 awg wire. This type of stuff is not readily available, and the best you may find for any gauge is a conductor made of strands of 30 awg wire (much larger and stiffer). and I'm just rambling now and have no idea where I'm going with this, so I'll sign off. Hope I didn't muddy things up too badly?