it was on to something with the "water? like from the toilet?" bit - automation and "convenience goods" really do divorce people from the process of making a thing.
I was trying to explain to the lady I'm seeing how rewarding stretching your own canvases is, especially comparing the quality you can get compared to like, michaels or joann's pre-stretched; not even like, "oh simply mill your own stretcher bars and biscuit joints", just like, buy canvas, buy gesso, buy 4x stretchers and staplegun everything together.
Like clearly you don't want to have to do this for everything - building your own phone is probably beyond most of us - but you'd be surprised how easy, customizable, and personalizable a lot of the DIY versions of premade goods are.
End of polemic.