A single mother raising four children on her own has truly excelled. She had been in an abusive relationship that was beginning to have an impact on the entire family. So she decided that enough was enough and made plans to relocate her children to a safer area. She saved enough money and built a house of 3500 square feet without the assistance of contractors. She had no prior building expertise, but she had watched innumerable YouTube courses on how to build buildings.

“We lost the ability to laugh as a group.”
Abuse is seldom easy to spot. Abusive relationships do not appear as dangerous from the outside as they do behind closed doors. When emotions enter the picture, things become even more complicated, especially when children are involved. Many people wait for a long time, hoping against hope that their circumstances will improve or that their abuser would change.

Cara Brookin’s patience had finally run out. She went into planning mode, figuring out how she was going to save herself and her four children, Hope, Drew, Jada, and Roman, from the clutches of their abuser. “We lost the capacity to laugh together,” she told TODAY home in 2017. “We’d been battered down for so long.”

She was driving the kids to the Ozark Mountains for Thanksgiving in 2007. She passed a house that had been wrecked by a recent tornado on her way. The only thing that remained were the foundations. This triggered an idea in Cara, who pulled over to the side of the road and got out to take a closer look. “I came to a halt and walked out to look at it, and I could see within the walls,” she explained. “I figured, if I really tried, I could put this back up.”

A single mother and her children built a house from the ground up.
Her children were immediately on board with the proposal after she discussed it with them. She went to the bank and obtained a $150,000 home loan to purchase the necessary building supplies. Keep in mind that none of them are trained contractors, and their sole experience of building houses came from viewing YouTube lessons.

According to the loan terms, they had only nine months to finish the project. The single mother and her children had to perform all of the construction herself because the loan only covered the cost of the materials and they couldn’t afford to hire a professional. But, a local firemen assisted them for $25 per hour. “We knew it was going to be difficult,” she admitted. “But we had no idea how big it was.”

This was all done in 2008, when YouTube was considerably more restricted. They also didn’t have smartphones, so they would frequently sit back and try to recall what the tutorial videos had advised them to do. Needless to say, there was a great deal of back and forth. “YouTube was disorganized in 2008,” she remarked. “Most of them were amateur videos.” “There was a lot of ‘Do you remember how to…?’ the next day,” she added.

A single mother built a 3500-square-foot house.
In their fantasies, the construction part seemed considerably easier. In reality, they learned the scope of the job they began was much larger, and they were completely unprepared. “We were so feeble back then, dragging these stones around and slugging through muck,” the single mother explained. “Since we didn’t have proper work boots, we wore plastic bags with old tennis shoes – we were absolutely unprepared.”

For a novice builder, the finished result is quite stunning. They gave their new home the name “Inkwell Manor.” It had 5 bedrooms, one for each child and one for the single mother. The entrance door was big, with steps leading to the grass in front. There were also three and a half toilets, which meant less squabbling in the morning. They also created a garage with space for three automobiles. “We overbuilt a lot to make sure everything was done properly.” “I was also conscious of being energy efficient,” she explained. “My goal was to have a very low-cost house to live in.”