^ So that’s why my sweet, intelligent, handsome, college educated and gainfully employed S with his own apartment and nice car doesn’t have a serious GF! I’ve been trying to figure this out for awhile. Must send him tools and “how to” videos. 
Funny to see this thread - I walked into my parents house last month and my mom goes “oh, just the person i’m looking for. I need a consultation for my basement renovation.” Lol!
But…the real question of the OP is…would you be able to do it, not just give a consultation. My DH would think he could if he had the times. He’s built by hand our backyard 2 storied deck, it took him 2 months doing it after work one summer. My kids would never be able to figure that out. He’s fixed our clothes dryer, etc. he never throws away a screw, lumber, bolt, etc.
My kid loved woodshop in middle school. He took 2 wood shop classes and then built a trebuchet in our backyard that chucked pumpkins. This summer he worked on a big construction site as a carpenter’s assistant.
He’ll be the 1st person I’ll call if I ever need a medieval weapon of mass destruction.
One of my Ds learned how to reupholster furniture. She even taught a class at her local community college. So what isn’t she here fixing my old and nasty dining room chairs?
She didn’t learn any of that from me or H although a friend and I used to love watching “furniture on the mend” on PBS back in the day. You can find those episodes on YouTube and they’re pretty funny.
@conmama wrote
Most of it I would be able to do, but I also know that some of it just is a miserable job to do. I am really good at tiling, but I don’t want to kill my knees anymore tiling a floor (or pouring the gross leveling compound or dealing with that).
One thing I don’t do is drywall-it’s just too heavy, and the people who do drywall are really good and really efficient at doing it perfectly. I do ask that they use screws rather than nails because popped drywall nails really bug me.
Pluming-eh, fixtures yes, pipe to pipe work, no.
Electrical-fixtures yes, running lines from the fuse box and working anywhere in the fuse box, no.
So I guess if I were going to do a basement, I’d do the finish work and the trim work and the painting, and leave the guts to the pros.
I hope you’re teaching your kids these skills @MotherOfDragons! Good on yuh!
Does anyone use nails in drywall anymore? :-t
^^The idiots who built my house did. There’s a popped drywall nail about 14 feet up in the stairwell. I have been made to agree to not try to fix it (and die in the process). Every time I go up the stairs I see it. ~X(
The rest of the house is built well (I couldn’t buy one that wasn’t), but the drywall people…grrr…
The only skills my kids are learning from me with regards to fixing the house is how to find a good contractor :). That’s a skill in and of itself!
“would you be able to do it, not just give a consultation.”
If you have followed fendergirl’s posts, she is pretty handy - that’s why she can give consultations like a pro.
A company’s CEO does not have to understand every nitty gritty detail an accountant can understand or get into the weeds of IP like a patent lawyer can. However, a good CEO knows how to assemble a trusted team and understand what they are doing on a global level. Ditto a homeowner should be able to understand when it is more efficient to call a team of pros (and not be taken for a ride) and when it is more efficient to fix something on her own. 
I can do a lot, but am really with the posters who no longer want to. Except I will paint, because I’m little obsessive about the job. I might refinish some floors, but the smaller job of rescreening. (The challenge would be how to get big equipment to the house.) My grandmother was a general contractor (builder) and got a wild kick out of the rage of things she could tackle herself. It was both crazy and a delight.
The joke with a friend is that I picked up my H at the decorative aisle and she headed over to the handymen specials aisle to get her H.
I made a T shirt that says “Decorative AND Functional”. 
I used to wear it when I went to Home Depot so the people working there wouldn’t treat me like I was an idiot.
I’m exceptionally frugal so I’ve always done almost all of my home maintenance and before son went off to college he was my assistant until he decided he knew more than me and wanted to take over managing the projects ;).
We’ve done a lot of plumbing work - replacing water heater several times, toilets, and crawling through the crawl space for leaks
We’ve laid tile and hardwood (including trimming the bottom off the stone fireplace to lay the hardwood under the stone)
We’ve done minor electrical work including son crawling above the ceilings to run electrical for new fixtures
We knocked out a wall, relocated the entrance to the room and added a closet
The only thing I didn’t manage to teach him was automotive stuff, but somehow he managed to pick that up on his own
Since he’s been in college he’s built himself a shelving unit at his apartment (not from one of those kits, but with 2x4s and plywood), made a ‘window seat’ - a long bench with a hinged top for storage, and when he got his last tax refund he was ‘bored’, so decided to buy a non-running ‘project’ car and have it towed to his apartment so he could fix it in his spare time.
Yeah, I think he’ll be a handy adult
I just wanted to say . . . . after posting earlier in this thread that I normally call someone to do any related to plumbing or electrical, the dimmer switch for my kitchen lights started to work intermittently – and then not at all.
I was about to call a handyman, but an incredibly handy friend who moved out of state just happened to pop into town, came over last night, and I asked him to look at it. I thought maybe it was a loose wire, but he said I needed a new dimmer and it was incredibly simple to replace. Seeing how skeptical I looked, he took it apart and showed me exactly what to do.
So I ran over to the local hardware store a few minutes ago, bought one exactly like what was there, and 5 minutes after getting home I have kitchen lights again. It was basically just flipping off the breaker, disconnecting 2 sets of wires on the old switch, reconnecting them with the new switch, screwing it back into the wall, and that was it.
I can’t believe I was going to pay a handyman to do that! Pretty proud of myself here. I’m thinking of buying some overalls and starting a side business replacing dimmer switches.
^^ @1Dreamer anytime I do electrical work like that, I always take a picture of the wiring BEFORE I disconnect it. I bet your guy didn’t need it, but I’ve found it to be enormously helpful once I’ve pulled off the broken switchbox and then I’m like, oh, wait, where did that wire go?
@MotherOfDragons , great idea. I feel emboldened by my success and think I’ll be trying to do more myself now, so I’ll be sure to do this. I actually wish something else would go wrong so I could give it a shot.