Wow, amazing upbringing! Kudos to your dad. I did a lot of stuff around our house growing up, but never that workload. Our kids did usual chores, but nothing severe. They were all expected to work from 14 onward and worked a lot of jobs from the local boathouse at the lake, to retail, pizza delivery, tire shop, and equestrian training.
I taught all of them how to use tools and build things. I gifted a lot of tools to both daughters and they know how to use them. Ironically, neither have very handy spouses, so they dig in, make things, and get things done. There’s no job too tough for them. The older one just completed a major remodel and did a lot of the work herself (with my help) and learned how to select and manage contractors. Her house foundation had settled about 3 inches on one side and she evaluated alternative ways to deal with it. Jacking up the foundation was going to be a permanent fix, but $40k to $50k. She thought about their expected stay in that house and decided it wasn’t worth it so she had a contractor install long wedges and a new subfloor on top of the wedges. Since their roof is angled, you don’t see the fact that the floor was adjusted like that. Our middle daughter is laying floor, building shelves, installing a workshop in the garage, and now installing a barn-style door to her home office.
I’m really proud of both of them for their can-do attitudes and willingness to tackle new challenges around their houses. It’s very gratifying as a dad to see that.
The one thing that we all have now that none of us had when we were kids is YouTube.
You can literally watch a video(or ten)and learn how to do or repair almost anything.
I have plaster ceilings in my current 1972 house. There were cracks when I moved there from previous water damage. I learned how to fix them by watching YouTube vidoes. Incidentally, many of them were from the UK where they have thousands of old houses with lath and horse hair plaster.
I fixed four ceiling cracks about eight years ago. So far they have not cracked again. I guess I did it correctly.