When life gives you lemons, watch YouTube tutorials and learn how to build a house.

That’s what Cara Brookins did: After escaping an abusive marriage, she and her four kids needed a safe haven, so they constructed one themselves.

Equipped with a bank loan and video-sharing site YouTube, the single mother and her young crew got to work hauling 2x4s, pouring concrete, and grouting tiles in what would become their sanctuary, Inkwell Manor.

The idea came in late 2007, after Brookins saw a house ravaged by a tornado.

“It was this beautiful dream house and it was sort of wide open,” she told CBS News(Opens in a new window) earlier this month. “Looking at these 2x4s and these nails, it just looked so simple. I thought … ‘Maybe I should just start from scratch.'”

With just enough money to buy construction supplies and an acre of land, Brookins had no plan B; it was DIY or die. So she started Googling and YouTubing and asking how to frame a window or put a foundation together.

The children—aged 17 (Drew), 15 (Hope), 11 (Jada), and two (Roman, pictured) at the time—got in on the action, as did, according to photos(Opens in a new window) on Brookins’ website, her parents.

“It hurt,” the 110-pound computer analyst told CBS News. “It was not something that was a great match to use physically, but my kids got up every day and they came out here.”

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Brookins worked through the day; the youngsters joined after school, often working into the night, “sometimes by headlights.”

“It was incredibly intense,” she added. “There was nobody going to the movies. There were no dates, no hanging out. It was all hands on deck.”

Now, the Bryant, Ark., home—and the group effort it took building it—is the subject of Brookins’ new memoir, Rise: How a House Built a Family(Opens in a new window).