I am much like the others, was sort of jack of many trades before buying my first motorhome, grew up on a farm, studied engineering in college, spent time working in the IT industry doing computer admin work, owned my own vinyl sign and screen printing business, etc. The RV stuff is somewhat different, but easy enough learn, of course I am the type that will read a pdf of a service manual of something I don't own while laying in bed trying to go to sleep.
You don't have to be a master mechanic to own a motorhome, but it does certainly help to know how to turn a screw driver. I don't do all the work on my coach myself, though I do a fair amount, using examples of things I have had to have done to my coach this year, I changed the alternator and the fan clutch myself (those were last week), but paid a local shop to change the ball joints, fabricate a new automatic parking brake hydraulic hard line, and fix the dash air conditioner. This week I replaced an electrical outlet in kitchen on my coach because the the clamps in it were getting loose and plugs would not stay plugged into the upper outlet anymore.
The point is even if you can only do some of the simple things, you can save a ton of money vs paying a shop $100-$150 per hour to do things like change a light bulb, or rewire an electric outlet. Also if you are not mechanically inclined, and maybe even if you are, you should strongly consider buying an extended warranty, there are companies out there that will cover the major mechanical stuff on motorhomes that you can sign up for even on a used coach up to 15 years old with one major brand and 20 years old with another. I recently met a guy that reps for these service companies, I think he mainly deals with RV dealers getting them to sell to their customers, but from talking to him they really do sound like a potential deal vs the potential of a major component failure. Of course it is all about the odds, but may be a good safety net to think about in case of something expensive like a transmission or engine failure.
As to living off grid using solar, it really depends on what you want to power, and how off grid you want to be. Modern notebook computers draw only a fraction of the power they did just 5 or so years ago, the current 15 inch Dell Inspiron will run for over 7 hours doing constant web surfing on a 40 watt hour battery (playing videos would probably be half that). That means they draw just about 6 watts per hour in typical use, though I am sure that is with screen brightness turned down, etc. Even double that for a heavy user with a 17 inch screen, and you are looking only 12 or so watts per hour. My AT&T Mobley celluar wifi internet hotspot draws under 3 watts with 5 wifi connections streaming some video, and has a max draw of about 6 watts worst case in a fringe reception area. Assuming no use of a printer, and 2 people with typical current notebook computers doing general web related activities, getting internet over a mifi like device will consume under 20 watts per hour of electricity.
In an 8 hour work day that works out to 140 watts hours.
A 100 watt flat mounted solar panel will generate on average about 400 watt hours of power per day on a typical mid America day. I have 4 100 watt panels mounted on the roof of my coach, and I know people that have over 800 watts of solar panels on similar size coaches, but that takes a lot of creativity to squeeze in.
Without getting into all the math I feel it takes about 200-300 watts worth of solar panels to cover the basic needs of living in an RV, that is to say power the controls on the propane absorption refrigerator, run LED interior lights 3 or 4 hours in the evening, power the blower motor on the furnace if cooler weather a few hours per night, operate the water pump, etc. Anything you want to do beyond that and you need more solar panels or need to run the generator, you also need more to handle cloudy days.
If you want to power a notebook computer, watch TV, you need more panels, if you want to run the microwave oven off an inverter you need a LOT MORE. With my 400 watts worth of panels I can typically last as long as I want to off grid with some power conservation in weather cool enough to not need air conditioning, though I would really like to have 600 watts of panels, and could dream of 800.