My grandpa (on my mothers side) was incredibly handy. My father's father died young of a heart attack, I never met him. My dad was taught a lot by my mother's father, and then he just had a DIY book he consulted. He built two decks, a treehouse, did all of our landscaping, finished our basement, including electrical. Just with that damn book. I hung a new light fixture, and felt like I needed to brag on social media about it.
But I do minor home stuff, and my FIL is the exact opposite, asking why I don't just pay someone to do things like stain the deck. I mentioned once that I was painting the bedrooms, and he asked to come help. Lasted 5 minutes, and then tapped out when I started taping. He's about to turn 70, but this was like 7 years ago, and it wasn't due to physical limitations, I think it was exclusively due to not realizing the minimal amount of work that went into painting a room.
I won't do electrical, granted the prior electrical on the light fixture I hung needed some reworking, or plumbing, with a caveat that once I did some plumbing work in our bathtub, because the only leak was going directly into the tub, so I felt confident that (a) it wasn't getting worse while I was figuring it out and (b) if I screwed it up worse, the water bill would just keep going up, it wouldn't cause additional damage
When I was 15, my stepfather was transferred from Columbus to Sandusky Ohio. His dad had a large farm and he bought 30 acres and decided to build a house.
I spent that summer living in a camper and building the house we would move into that coming winter. Due to my stepdads work schedule, it was basically me doing most of the work. We did hire out the foundation, basement and septic system and drywall finishing, but my stepfather and I did everything else, electrical, plumbing, framing, roof, siding, drywall, you name it. I learned a lot.
After I got married, I bought a house (cape cod) that did not have the 2nd floor finished. I finished the 2nd floor, finished the basement, build a 2 1/2 car garage and remodeled the first floor since then. I have a friend that knew how to finish drywall and he taught me how to do it correctly and quickly, so I ended up doing all of that in my house also. I lay all of my own carpet, hardwood floors, do my own trim work and my other small tasks. However if I can get away with it, I let someone else paint as I absolutely HATE painting.
My wife has a cousin that was a self employed handyman that would often hire out to do odd jobs. Whenever he got into a larger job, I would take a few weekends and help him. (He wasn't very good and framing roof rafters and would call me to help him with those). But he was a hard worker and I enjoyed framing houses so I didn't mind lending him a hand.
As for vehicle maintenance, when I was 16 I got my my first car. I was an old beater (we could not afford much more). After a year, the engine took a dump and I went to a junkyard, found a replacement and rebuilt that engine and and replaced the bad one with it. I also helped friend work on their cars, and had a neighbor pay me to overhaul an engine on one of his smaller tractors. (I learned a lot doing that one). I replaced another engine in a work truck that we bought and rebuilt another engine for one of my sisters best friends all before I graduated High School.
A couple of years ago, my youngest daughter was dating a young man that was essentially homeless but living with relatives (came from a poor family and lost both of his parents to health issues). He purchased an older Pontiac Grand Am and ran it out of oil destroying the engine. Again, we (he and I) went to a junkyard, found a replacement engine from a wrecked car and replaced his engine. That one was considerably harder than what I had done years ago as I had to drop the engine/trans from the bottom of the car and put the new one back the same way. Luckily my wife's uncle had a car lift that made it possible.
Now that I am approaching 60 years old, I am finding that I no longer wish to take on big projects. Last year, I needed to replace part of the roof and decided to hire it out. My roof has a 12/12 pitch and the thought of placing the roof jacks and going up and down ladders did not interest me. In my younger days, I would never have considered not doing it myself.
