A single mother built a tiny house by herself after a divorce, and she says it changed her life
Kelley Lewis felt the desire to begin anew following a contentious divorce.
Lewis had three children to care for on her alone and lived in Columbus, Ohio, back then. In order to distract herself and lift herself out of her sadness, she needed a project. She learned about the tiny house movement and immediately realized it would be perfect for her family’s holiday home.
Learn how Lewis transformed her life as she painstakingly constructed the home, nail by nail.
The narrative of Kelley Lewis starts in 2008, when she was married and had an unexpected pregnancy.
She took a social work career she hated soon after getting married and having a child at a young age.
“It was a culmination of all these really stressful and soul-breaking events, and I attempted suicide when my son was 10 months old,” recalled Lewis.
She was resolute in her goal to begin anew, even while Lewis was in the hospital. She lived out her lifelong passion of opening a daycare while confined to her hospital bed, devouring books on the subject.
“On a piece of paper, I made a rough outline of a business plan from the hospital,” said the woman. “When I got out of the hospital, I put in my two weeks’ notice at the job I had and then opened my own daycare, which I then franchised a few years later.”
She sought a method to restore healthy creativity to her life after falling into depression after her divorce years later.
Little House by Kelly Lewis
Lewis at her plot of land adjacent to the house she intends to build. With gratitude to Kelley Lewis
“In 2012, I went through a divorce, and it was kind of this release of this trauma and tragedy in my life,” according to her. Although I have never been addicted to drugs, there are many instances in which sadness feels like a return to my old methods of using. When things are going swimmingly, you don’t give a second thought to relapsing; instead, you tell yourself, “I can’t make anything better. Life is better without me.”
Lewis had to cope with these feelings on top of being a mother to her three children by this stage. She sought treatment after realizing the emotions were similar to those she had experienced after her suicide attempt years earlier. As time went on, she came to terms with the fact that she needed to take action and was “looking for a way to rebuild my life.”
When Lewis found out that the developer was having problems selling some plots of land surrounding the lake in South Vienna, which is just outside of Columbus, Ohio, she seized the opportunity because her mother owned a house on the lake. She spent $70,000 in 2012 to purchase 1.5 acres of land.
“I didn’t have a new business per se to occupy my time and interest and artistic abilities, so I bought a piece of land and thought, ‘This is the next thing I’m going to dive into,'” according to her.
