I used to own a 1000 sq ft cape cod that was built in 1942. I fixed everything myself and since it was small, nothing could really get out of hand. I believe most of the pain involved in home owning lately has come from bigger houses with more complex systems/appliances.
The way to do it is really to find a small set of good, reliable tradespeople, give them your business for all your repairs and improvements, and pay them well. There aren't many of them, though, and they'll cost you. Finding that small set of reliable contractors is part of what your rent goes to.
My dad used to do a lot of the home maintenance himself. Sometimes it worked fine, and sometimes (like the time he tried to replace the roof himself right before a thunderstorm, without having a giant tarp) it was pretty disastrous. In any case, it's not really realistic in today's world (where you usually need two incomes to survive) with today's homes (which are giant, complex, and built to a labyrinth of building codes that you are probably violating when you do improvements yourself).
Personally I loathe doing any kind of maintenance work. I hate dealing with drywall, paint, wiring, pipes, and whatever else you have to deal with when maintaining a home.
I preemptively replaced my water system this spring (electric to gas heater, added water softener). Took me a whole week (5-10pm work) and lots of pre-planning, but every time I walk downstairs I can't help but admire all the coppers lines I piped in. I dunno it was kinda like Hello World of the building trades, hearing the heater kick in after all was done was awesome.
Now, I've worked with my hands my whole life and have done tons of smallerish projects around this house, but this was the biggest one I tackled. Saved me 3-5k I'm sure and it really gave me a sense of accomplishment.
To each is own though.
I like the _control_ I have in owning my place, but I abhor the responsibility of fixing systems.
I hate all that stuff. I hate spending hours at Home Depot trying to find the right parts and tools to do things.
I just hate dealing with hardware in general.
Unfortunately, at least in our market, there's not much built in the last 20 years where the builders favored actual rooms instead of just one giant open public space. If you're lucky the basement's finished so maybe you get two of those.
More rooms is nice if you don't like being on top of every single other person in the house all the time, without having to go to your bedroom (aren't we supposed to only go there for sleep, for sleep-hygiene reasons?) to escape. In recent houses this means using ~3x the space you actually need to accomplish that, mostly by adding a room or two in a finished basement, because the main public area's gigantic, yes, but also entirely open.
It's also very nice to be able to contain messes. So nice. One large shared living space plus kids means no part of your house ever doesn't look like shit without heroic efforts or paid help.