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Woman Built House From the Ground Up Using Nothing But YouTube Tutorials (digitaltrends.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the fill-in-the-blank dept.

schwit1 quotes a report from Digital Trends: In this generation of self-starters and self-made women and men, do-it-yourself isn't just an option, it's a way of life. And if there's not an app for that, chances are there's a YouTube video for it. That was certainly the case for a woman named Cara Brookins, who is living proof that if you're willing to learn, you absolutely can. In 2008, Brookins was in the midst of a family struggle, having left a husband she called "violent and abusive." Looking to make a fresh start for herself, she took the idea of rebuilding quite literally, perhaps using the physical experience of constructing a house as an extension of her emotional and mental journey. Though she had no previous experience in construction or architecture, Brookins found a series of YouTube tutorials on building a home and got to work. Over the course of nine months, Brookins worked tirelessly with the help of her four children to build a new home for themselves. "I had rented this cabin for a Thanksgiving getaway," the mother of four told CBS News. "And driving there, we passed this house that had been ravaged by a tornado. It was this beautiful dream house and it was sort of wide open. You don't often get the opportunity to see the interior workings of a house, but looking at these 2x4s and these nails, it just looked so simple. I thought, "I could put this wall back up if I really tried. Maybe I should just start from scratch.'"

7 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. What about electrical, plumbing etc? by jonwil · · Score: 5, Informative

    I dont know how it works elsewhere but here in Australia there are a number of jobs (electrical work, plumbing, telecom work and others) that you can't legally do unless you have the right license.

    1. Re:What about electrical, plumbing etc? by Sarlok · · Score: 5, Informative

      That depends on state and city laws. In a lot of places a homeowner is allowed to do any work themselves on their own home. So I could do electrical and plumbing work on my own house (and in fact I have), but I could not do electrical work on someone else's house or a commercial building without being a licensed electrician.

    2. Re: What about electrical, plumbing etc? by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 3, Informative
      Most of the hours are equivalent to the software engineering equivalent of grunt work - publishing specs, making sure that code meets coding standards, etc...something you can give to an intern to do at $25/hr vs your 25 years experience $75/hr/ - Drilling holes in studs, running cable, installing outlet boxes and light fixtures.

      If you've had a physics class and can read the building codes (not easy to find), you can correctly size the wire and do everything else without much difficulty. Let the electrician do the final connections at the breaker box. That's a few minutes of work. Hanging the fuse box and getting the wires to all fit in neatly is a PITA and takes a long time, but not a job you can screw up unless you break the shielding, or have enough shielding extending beyond the strain reliefs, or not having strain reliefs. Stuff you can pick up through a few hours of study.

    3. Re: What about electrical, plumbing etc? by Oligonicella · · Score: 5, Informative

      None of the above. It's an attempt to close off private work and coerce the use of pro or union labor. And one cannot assume the pro did it correctly so there's no more danger than with final inspection on a professional installation. If it passes it's right.

    4. Re: What about electrical, plumbing etc? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      When one wires/rewires a house there is an inspection step before the wall is closed up. No one will ever sign on on electrical work that wasn't visually inspected.

      Friend of mine that is a contractor says having the drywall guys put up the drywall before the electrical is signed off is good for a laugh. Because they have to tear it off. Wait for the inspector to reschedule[1]. Then after the inspection put up new drywall, again.

      [1] How does Wednesday a week from today work?

    5. Re:What about electrical, plumbing etc? by jabuzz · · Score: 3, Informative

      Lots of people, and why not. It's first fix. You run all the wires to where they are going to go, when you have easy access to drill holes through the timber framing and pull the wires. You then put up the plasterboard or potentially if you live somewhere where houses are not made from match wood, the base-coat plaster is applied to any brick/block walls, and then the whole lot is skimmed. After that you then come back for second fix which is where the cable is cut back, ends stripped and actual sockets and switches are installed. In the UK this is is standard practice, and I imagine it is in most countries.

      Heck for a quality job this is almost necessary because you will need to install a support for a metal back box. Sure you can cut a hole in the plasterboard and stick one of those pieces of junk plastic ones that will break the first time the socket gets a whack when something is plugged in but that is not a quality job. A quality job has a timber support added between the timber framing and a metal back box screwed to that which can't easily be done once the plasterboard is installed.

  2. Re:pull yourself up by your massive amounts of mon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    What you say is largely true about the people in the minimum wage sector of society, but you should have read the article before ranting.

    She and her children are obviously smart and hard working. Having BOTH these characteristics is the advantage she has over those who will never get out of their situation.
    I cannot understand what is wrong with you that you would say "but she didnt pull herself up by anything, by definition, because she had time and money to build a fucking house." Your statement is contrary to fact. Learn To Read.

    I used to teach at a community college and we had so many students just as you described - minimum wage, kids, and black eyes and bruises. And not all single parents are female. And not everyone with the minimum wage job that decides to improve themselves is abused.
    They took classes whenever they could to get a skill for a real job. They, too, pulled themselves up with brains and work just like the story above. Every single semester right here in America. And yeah, lots of them failed to finish.
    I'm sorry that your friends can't get out of their ruts, but everyone in America is told almost from birth what the game is, how to play it, and most important, how not to play it.

    Here's what you missed by not reading the article:

    So, over the course of the next nine months, Brookins, a 110-pound computer analyst, and her four kids built their dream home from the ground up. They did everything from hand-mixing the mortar for the foundation to running gas lines and framing walls. And while it wasn’t easy, they persevered.

    “It hurt,” she told CBS News. “It was not something that was a great match to us physically, but my kids got up every day and they came out here. I was working all day and they were in school, and we would work into the night sometimes by headlights. It was incredibly intense. There was nobody going to the movies. There were no dates, no hanging out. It was all hands on deck.”