Original subtitles

[tranquil music]

[fire crackling]

[motor humming]

[fire crackling]

[tranquil music]

JESSICA JONES [VOICEOVER]: My name is Jessica Jones.

[birds chirping]

And we are in Yucca Valley, right on the border

of Joshua Tree, California in my home

that I like to call Jewel Crest.

The first time I came to Joshua Tree I was just blown away.

The landscape in this area is breathtaking.

I remember just staring out of the window for hours

and just being mesmerized by the Joshua trees,

which I'd never seen before.

There's also a lot of Native desert

plants, many of them that bloom around the springtime.

My inspiration for the design was Scandinavian.

And I know that that's kind of random in the desert,

but I wanted something that I hadn't seen done before

but that still kind of fit in.

I come from a family of people who work in construction,

and I also have dibbled and dabbled

a little bit in renovations.

So I had a little bit of an idea, but, honestly, not much.

I never built anything from scratch.

I remember coming, and my contractor was like, where

do you want the house to be?

And I came out [laughs] and like put stakes in the ground

and put like a little string between the stakes.

And I was like, what am I doing?

But that's where the house ended up being, and it-- it

worked out really well.

It's funny because I don't know that people really took me

100% seriously when I said I was going to build

this house from scratch.

I think they're like, oh, yeah, that sounds good.

But then once they [laughs] saw that I

just kept chugging along, they're

like, oh, this girl's serious.

OK, wow, that's like pretty impressive.

And these are approved, reviewed for code compliance.

The thing that this house taught me was resilience and just

relentless persistence because literally everything that could

have gone wrong went wrong, and there

were parts that were amazing and parts that were a nightmare.

In terms of some of the wins, I would say just

like the satisfaction of getting to decide

every detail of the project and not having to negotiate

with anybody, and playing the art

director, creative director, playing a designer--

it reminded me how much I like creativity

and being able to really make a dream come to life.

[acoustic guitar]

I wanted a lot of clean lines but without being

super modern and boxy.

So there's different shapes, whether it's

circles like with the table and the chairs.

I wanted there to be different textures, so, for example,

the dining chairs--

I love that they are this kind of like sage-green color

in a velvet.

Then my couch is a vegan leather,

which I also really like because it's just very cozy.

I didn't want to have concrete floors,

but, again, trying to stick with the Scandinavian desert,

non-desert theme where [laughs] the floor is

kind of like a wood color and bring

in a little bit more coziness.

When you enter into the house you see a big,

beautiful 8-by-10-foot window, and there's an amazing view.

My favorite part about the house is the bifold sliding door

that you can just completely open

and have like that indoor-outdoor feeling.

So you can be barbecuing on the patio,

and also like cooking something in the kitchen,

and just walking back and forth.

It's really great for entertaining.

[indistinct chatter]

I also like the open concept of the house

because there is a living room and a small kitchen that's

divided by the staircase.

So it feels like it has a little bit of division,

but yet you can see through the staircase.

And then there's two bedrooms, one on the bottom floor

that is a little bit bigger.

That one-- I put a king bed in there.

When you wake up from the downstairs bed,

there's a really big window that just kind of points

straight to the landscape, and you

see this amazing desert view.

You see Joshua trees.

The sun is coming in, and it's a great way to just of

wake you up.

And then I have the cozy bedroom upstairs,

which is more of a loft, and I love

that it has an A-frame roof.

I put a desk in there for when I need to do some work,

and it just feels like the perfect size.

When I first went into the bathroom, once it was completed

I was just like, aah, [laughs] because it's just so warm.

I have these pink tiles along the shower walls

and also the gold accents.

I think it's, creatively, probably

my favorite part in the house.

I've been in a lot of desert houses

where there are a lot of windows, which is amazing,

but it just feels like you can't escape the sun.

And this being a small place--

it's about 1,000 square feet--

I wanted to make sure that you can go outside if you want sun,

but if you want to [laughs] not be super hot

you can come inside.

This window here faces north, and north is nice because it's

very even sunlight.

I really debated about whether or not to post like my journey

online about building the space because I was like,

oh, I don't really know if it'll resonate with anybody,

or I don't want anybody to feel like, look

at me, like I'm showing off.

But then I thought, like, I have not really

seen like that many Black women represented in real estate

alone but also, like, building something from the ground up,

so I was like, it would be really cool if I could just

be maybe an inspiration for other people

to see that they could do it, too.

So after kind of posting and sharing my journey and, like,

why I was doing it, I had so many Black women DM me and say

that they wanted to build something, too,

and they didn't know that it was possible.

And so it's been really nice to have other people of color,

in particular Black women, be inspired and move

forward in their own journey.

[music playing]