Moving into your first home can be an exciting time for people, but building one with your own hands can seem overwhelming to the average person. This was the case when Cara Brookins, mother of four, took on the chore herself using nothing but YouTube tutorials to help her along the way.
Some may ask why she didn’t just move her kids into a new home? Well there’s a lot more to this story that Cara found difficult to talk about at the beginning.
After abusive relationships, two marriages filled with violence, and being stalked by a man with a mental illness, “my kids and I needed something,” Cara said. “I felt ashamed and I was worried that they had no self-esteem and no confidence.”
Talk about down on their luck. So instead of letting it get the best of her, this Arkansas-based mother decided to grab life by the balls and make a change for the better. With a bank loan of $150,000 she was in the market to move her family into a more stable environment.
Brookins found a tornado hit house that only had the foundation left and her vision of what could become of the space soon blossomed. She had an idea for the space saying “what if we bought some 2’x4’s and sheetrock and put that together? What would our dream house be? Would we want to build it?,” and her kids replied with an “ABSOLUTELY!”