[the_cat_kittles]

lovely story! i think there are two factors at play that dont get mentioned enough:

youtube and the internet at large has made diagnosing and fixing lots of problems much simpler and quicker.

amazon, ebay, and 3d printing and other cheap ways of making things have created lots of cheap, decent replacement parts that can arrive at your house in 2 days.

these two factors make repairing things yourself a couple orders of magnitude easier than 20 years ago, say. i cannot believe its only now really coming to the fore