Today we’d like to introduce you to Kristen Ontiveros
Hi Kristen, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
As an only child, I spent a lot of my time alone reading, or creating things. I always loved art and ceramics class.
I also spent much of time outside and gravitated towards making or creating in some form. I also aged out of the foster care system so you can imagine life may have been difficult at times for me as a child. I like to think that this part of my life taught me how to put my head down and work hard. Even during my high school and college years, I struggled but I always knew if I worked hard, and pushed through, I would get to the other side and things would be better. While I would have preferred to have a better life growing up, it has made me into the person I am today and I really like her. My current life looks a little chaotic at times while I chase around a toddler and also try to renovate my home, document the process on social media, and work a full time job. When I take a step back or have a minute to relax, I am so grateful. I didn’t just fall into home renovation or content creation. It took ten years to get where I am now, and if you would have asked me ten years ago if I could imagine myself designing or flipping homes, I would have probably laughed, but I feel like I have found my passion and that’s pretty cool.
With creativity, also comes shard work, and sometimes that means getting your hands dirty or your surroundings a little messy. I have always been the person with expensive taste but never had the budget for it so I often would say “I bet I can just make it myself.” So, when my then boyfriend, now husband decided we would buy a house instead of renew our apartment lease in 2019, the ideas began flowing on how we could flip a house and I spent hours on Pinterest and YouTube learning how to renovate homes and saving projects to come back to once we moved.
In October of 2019, we bought a townhome and immediately began renovating. Thankfully my husband had some construction experience, YouTube was always helpful, and I had friends and family to lean on when we really needed something we couldn’t do ourselves. From 2019 to 2023, we lived in the chaos of constant renovation while I not only planned a wedding and got married, but completed grad school and eventually found out I was pregnant. That made us kick things into gear. We knew we wanted to sell and get into a bigger home with a yard, so we made it happen in April of 2023.
The best thing about this journey is I found my passion for home design and renovation but I also began documenting my journey online and found an entire community of other creators doing the exact same thing. I have not only gained new friends, but an entire audience that loves following along. Now, I am on my second home renovation and the best part about starting an online community is turning this into a career. I get to work and partner with brands as well as create content. I especially love working with local brands and partnering with family owned business. I honestly never thought about social media in the beginning but after we began renovating our first home, I thought it would be really cool to document everything so we could see the progress we made. It has been the best decision I have made!
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
There have definitely been ups and downs. The internet can be brutal, especially when you go viral. I’m thankful I have tough skin and although I’d love to just ignore all the comments, you have to filter out the bad to get to the good ones and be able to reply. Living in home renovation isn’t glamorous either. If you’re constantly doing projects, your home is also constantly a huge mess unless you can close the door, and that’s not always the case. It’s a huge sacrifice especially when you are renovating something big like a kitchen. Add working full time on top of everything and it doesn’t give you much time. We now also have a one year old, and that adds a whole new layer of trying to navigate the dream we want to build for ourselves and our family while also juggling everyday responsibility. It’s definitely hard but we have our goal in mind and know what life can look like once we reach that potential so the stressful times are worth it.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I studied at kansas state university and graduated with my bachelors in social work. I moved to Utah in 2017 and spent a few years working in child welfare before getting my masters from boise state. I’ve worked at a local elementary school for the last two years but took some time off after having my baby in order to focus on being a mom as well as creating content on social media. My plan is to finish my hours for my LCSW and specialize in perinatal health. Since experiencing motherhood and struggling with pre and postpartum anxiety, I’d love to help other women through these times as well. I don’t think there is enough support or access to care in the perinatal space so I’m passionate about serving women in this space and mental health in general. My goal is to focus on this part time as it can be exhausting working a 40 hour work week as a therapist.
I love social media and creating content, and ideally I would love to turn my passion into a business and be able to flip more homes, but not live in them at the same time.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
I am definitely a risk taker and I feel like the bigger the risk, the bigger the reward. It is scary at times to take that leap of faith but in my own experiences, it has always worked out. It may not have turned out exactly as I expected, but it’s always better than what it would have been had I not tried in the first place. With that being said, I’m not fearless. There is fear in the unknown and I definitely have taken risks and been scared at the same time. There is risk in anything if you think about it. When I decided to stay home with my baby and create content, I gave up a steady income, benefits and such in order to be unemployed and create content. My hope was to replace my full time income with content creation. That didn’t exactly work out. I made some income, but not as much as I had hoped. But the bright side of that I was able to stay home for 6 months and raise my baby. That is much longer than the average working mother. I’m so thankful for that time, and although it was my plan to go back to work part time so I could finish my licensing requirements, it was disappointing to not meet my goal I had set for myself and feel the pressure of finding a job and going back to work when I didn’t feel ready. I did however learn a lot about creating content, earning an income online and what it takes to be a working mom.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heyibuiltthis
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100088577551436
- Other: www.heyibuiltthis.com
Image Credits
Franco Photo https://francophoto.pixieset.com
