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Woman Built House From the Ground Up Using Nothing But YouTube Tutorials (digitaltrends.com)
schwit1 quotes a report from Digital Trends: In this generation of self-starters and self-made women and men, do-it-yourself isn't just an option, it's a way of life. And if there's not an app for that, chances are there's a YouTube video for it. That was certainly the case for a woman named Cara Brookins, who is living proof that if you're willing to learn, you absolutely can. In 2008, Brookins was in the midst of a family struggle, having left a husband she called "violent and abusive." Looking to make a fresh start for herself, she took the idea of rebuilding quite literally, perhaps using the physical experience of constructing a house as an extension of her emotional and mental journey. Though she had no previous experience in construction or architecture, Brookins found a series of YouTube tutorials on building a home and got to work. Over the course of nine months, Brookins worked tirelessly with the help of her four children to build a new home for themselves. "I had rented this cabin for a Thanksgiving getaway," the mother of four told CBS News. "And driving there, we passed this house that had been ravaged by a tornado. It was this beautiful dream house and it was sort of wide open. You don't often get the opportunity to see the interior workings of a house, but looking at these 2x4s and these nails, it just looked so simple. I thought, "I could put this wall back up if I really tried. Maybe I should just start from scratch.'"
It's okay, we ahve several "liberal" cities where you have to pay off a union to get work done, but by and large, most counties only care if it's done by code. You can pull a permit and do the work yourself. As someone else pointed out, you do have to have a lineman (power company) to hook up to the mains, but that's because they own the lines, and you have to have a licensed plumber to connect to city water and sewer (because you can fuck that up and poison people), and the gas company will hook to the gas main, but other than actually touching the utilities, everything else you may do for yourself in the free parts of the country.
Now, and as a right-wing, gun loving nutjob, I agree, that you have to be licensed to sell those services to other people, as you stand a decent chance of really screwing someone else by fucking up their house, But, as long as you can get the licenses reasonably, that's not an unreasonable certification. Hell, the flexible natural gas certification can be done entirely online. Plumbing and Electrical licenses require an apprenticeship and test in most municipalities, but those get you well certified well beyond the residential construction.
None of the skilled trades in residential construction require a high school diploma. Any reasonable intelligent person who's willing to learn can learn them on the job.