Paralyzed Dad in Wheelchair Builds Elaborate Bedroom for Daughters: 'It's a Huge Emotional Reward' (Exclusive)

After a construction accident left Dan Kotter paralyzed in 2013, he was determined not to let life in a wheelchair prevent him from being "fulfilled as a father"

In 2013, Daniel Kotter was helping a friend build a house when the truss he was standing on — 35 feet in the air — started to sway.

“I was like, ‘Oh crap,’” Kotter, 46, tells PEOPLE exclusively. “I took a couple of steps. That's the last thing I remember. And then, I woke up in the hospital.”

The accident left the once-active construction worker from West Haven, Utah, paralyzed from the waist down, with extensive injuries including a torn spleen, collapsed lung, and broken pelvis.

“I had my hammer slung behind my back, like right in the center of my tool belt," he recalls. "It's just a normal place that carpenters would sling their hammer, and I landed on that area. My hammer was there and the impact caused my L-1 vertebrae to explode.”

As his wife Andrea — who met Dan while he was recuperating in the hospital from his accident — tells PEOPLE, “After his injury, he was looking all over YouTube to try to find other people who were paralyzed that could give him hope and inspiration that he could still live a decent life and do the things he loved to do. And he couldn't find anything out there at that time.”

“The things that he did find were actually very hopeless,” Andrea, 42, tells PEOPLE. “He's like, ‘Is that my fate?’ So we've had a dream to start putting content out there.”

Andrea started posting about the couple’s life on a TikTok account, The Wheelchair Dad, sharing snippets of their life together as a blended family. (Dan has daughters Mikayla, 17, and Quinn, 12, from a previous marriage; Andrea has sons Noah, 16, and Uriah, 11, from a previous marriage, and the couple welcomed two daughters — Maisie, 4, and Marlee, 2, via in vitro.)

But it was when Andrea — who manages the channel — shared a video a week ago of the elaborate playroom-style bedroom Dan designed and built for Maisie, Marlee, and Quinn, that their channel exploded.

The video got more than 23 million views — something Andrea called a “Christmas miracle.”

“Every time I really think about it, I start to get choked up,” Dan tells PEOPLE about the play set bedroom. “It does make me feel more useful, more fulfilled as a father, being able to give my kids something I would have been able to do beforehand as a dad.”

“One of the hardest, more sad things that just wears on me through the years, it's like, ‘Gosh, like I wanna carry my daughter in the house.’ So it's awesome to be able to do that and to see their faces and, and their excitement and disbelief. It is a huge emotional reward as a man and as a father.”

Related: TikToker, 29, with Incurable Stage 4 Cancer Shares Her ‘Living List’ for the Time She Has Left (Exclusive)

And this season had been especially difficult, as the couple had been struggling financially after medical bills and favors for other family members in need. With "maxed out" credit cards, "we're strapped," Dan says. "I don't know what else to do, that we can make Christmas happen.”

Since the video went up, Andrea was able to compile an Amazon wish list for their kids — and more than 63 presents have been purchased.

But the biggest perk of their viral fame is scoring a few points in their kids’ eyes.

“I showed our older boys this video after it started going viral,” Andrea tells PEOPLE. “They both like were, like, jaw-dropped, and like,’ Oh my gosh, he's so cool.’”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!

Read the original article on People.