One woman has shared her experience of building a house from scratch.
Single mum Cara Brookins, a senior computer analyst and author, and her kids Roman, Jada, Hope, and Drew have spent the last few years constructing a house after she worried they had "no self-esteem and no confidence."
Cara had lived through her fare share of abusive relationships during earl adulthood, divorcing twice.
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"The reality is when you're facing that level of terror, you're all just in survivor mode," she told BuzzFeed. "Each one of you is just trying to make it through the day. I worried that if they left home I'd never see them again."
Cara was inspired to build her own family sanctuary after driving home from a weekend away when she saw a tornado-hit house that'd been reduced to mere foundation.
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"It made me think, '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?'"
It was something, in her view, that her kids - 17, 15, 11, and 2 at the time - "could do to improve their lives."
With the help of a bank loan, Cara purchased materials totalling $150,000 (£123,000), Cara and the kids went about building their own house, instructed by nothing other than Youtube tutorials.
"We were exceptionally naive, but sometimes ignorance takes the place of courage."
"As we were trying to do this, we were also learning how to communicate," the mother added.
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This was the final result. The family have been living here for eight years.
"They're now fearless," Cara said, talking about the effect it's had on her children. "They dive into anything. There's nothing you could suggest to them that they could not do. it's an incredible thing."
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Impressive, give me a six-figure bank loan and I'd probably end up destroying a house.
All image credits: Cara Brookins
Featured Image Credit:Topics: America, Family, House