They say if life gives you lemons, make lemonade. We all know that this is easier said than done, but nothing is truly impossible if we set our minds to it and work hard to make it happen.
Cara Brookins ended up in a brutal marriage. She left her husband, took her children, and began anew in a new home since she was a mother of five and realized she needed to protect her children from the toxic environment in which they were raised. How did she accomplish this? by drawing her own construction drawings and watching YouTube videos that displayed various building techniques such as plumbing installation, gas line installation, foundation pouring, and wall constructing. It sounds great, doesn’t it?
Now that she thinks about it, she realizes it was impossible the entire time.
Cara, a computer programmer analyst, came up with the concept of building her family’s new home from the ground up because she couldn’t afford to buy a house large enough to accommodate all of her children when she began construction in 2007.
Cara expressed the opinion that “if anyone were in our situation, they would do this.” “I know it sounds crazy now, but no one else saw it like this.”
She borrowed about $150,000 for construction and paid $20,000 for an acre of land.
Her children helped build their 3,500-square-foot home; the eldest was only two years old at the time and the youngest was seventeen.
Since there was no running water on the property, her 11-year-old daughter Jada had to use buckets to carry water from the neighbor’s pond. Her son Drew assisted her in creating the plans. After that, she combined it with concrete bags weighing eighty pounds to create the foundation mortar.
The children would visit the site and assist every day after school. This tenacious mother paid $25 per hour to a part-time firefighter with building experience to complete the most difficult tasks. He was “a step ahead of us in terms of knowledge,” she recalled.
The family finally moved into Inkwell Manor on March 31, 2009, which was named in honor of Cara’s aspiration to become a writer.
“We felt ashamed that the only option available to us was to construct our own shelter,” Cara remarked. “We weren’t particularly proud of it, but it ended up being the best thing I could have done for myself.”
“Anything is possible for you if I, a 110-pound computer programmer, can build a whole house,” she exclaimed.
She continued, stating, “Select one goal and stick to it. Choose a big project you’ve always wanted to do, start small, and take the others who also need to recover with you. That has a great deal of power.
