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Good morning everyone. I was not expecting how strange, complicated, and utterly EMO I would feel about preparing today’s story, having fallen in love with a place + a temporary home I was really never supposed to fall in love with. It came with icky industrial carpeting, dropped ceilings, wood paneling, and some extremely haunted ruffled curtains…but you know, somehow I knew.

She knew, too.

I’m sure a lot of you can relate, though, getting attached to an imperfect environment and then having all these freaky feelings when it comes time for that phase of home to turn into something new. In just a few weeks we start the demo/excavation phase of cleaning out the interior history of this beautiful and now much beloved 1960s brick building we bought six years ago and have been living in while we’ve prepared for this moment.

We’ve got SO MANY snapshots, plus Kevin filmed me doing a video tour down below (both horrifying and a treat!) that is likely too long, but I really wanted to give you a personal tour, given so many of you have been on this journey with us for the past bunch of years. Before we get into all of it, a few bits of FUN housekeeping to start us off…

All sold! (Minus third-grader.)

I hosted a yard sale last Saturday morning with my friend Hallie to do a final clean-out before demo begins. Thank you to everyone who stopped by or DM’d about info. Hallie and I set up in the driveway next to our wildflower meadow at 8 a.m., and for the following four hours we greeted neighbors, sipped Raffi’s lemonade w/friends, and haggled our hearts out. We made lots of space in the basement, where most of our things will be stored once demo on the doctor’s office commences. Also: I pulled about 15 things from the sale just for our Paid subscribers that will be up for grabs tomorrow (Friday) at NOON EST (making it nice for our West Coast peeps, too), all at real down-and-dirty yard sale prices (including the embroidered vintage pillowcase set ⬇️ I snagged from Hallie’s table). Reminder: These personally curated sales of the vintage/things I collect are one of the best perks of being a paying member of our ATA family here, so if you’re down for this type of recurring inspiration—along with special features like today’s—pls do join us ♥️.

PS: I was thinking, if you all have fun things to purge/sell/make space for, it could be fun for us to host an ATA Community Yard Sale in our members chat thread…sort of our own scrappy/cool marketplace. If you’re interested, message us/comment below, and Erin and I will sort out the details!

After visiting Animal Kind, we had an early supper at Hudson Diner, a classic spot that is PERFECT in every way.

You know I’m not crafty, but while I was gutting drawers for the yard sale last week, I came across this Very Good Calvin Klein shirt Kevin wore to a black-tie wedding a few years ago. The collar had an ink stain, so instead of ditching it (the quality was too beautiful/the rest of it was still optic white), I cut the collar off, just to see. After a wash, the bare edge got this nice distressed effect reminiscent of a Comme des Garçons/Jil Sander top, and I haven’t been able to take it off. A nifty move for any marvelous shirt where the collar never really hit.

One last shout-out for Pique—I’ve been sooo in love with this beautiful brand’s nutritional blends/elixirs—so good for ++energy, hydration, and sustained concentration when I’m writing late into the afternoons. You already know how smitten I am w/Nandaka, their yummy chocolate mushroom “coffee,” but I’ve also been using their X·E Fountain Energizing Electrolytes as well as their Sun Goddess Matcha packets. The X·E is equally handy later in the day for steady energy sans crash (its skin-brightening properties are a bonus☀️:). Both come in the handiest on-the-go single packs to use when I’m working, thrifting, or just navigating a manic day. Reminder: This week is the last to lock in Pique’s up to 20% off for ATA readers + some free gifts; just use this link, I promise it’s WONDERFUL. #piquepartner

The last month has been a sort of fever dream trying to document as much of our beloved doctor’s office as we can before the demo team comes in to gut the space for renovation…aka, its next life.

In truth, I think this has been a way for me to stall my mourning as I say goodbye to this phase of this strange brick building from 1964 in a town we’d never lived before but that somehow called to us just the same. Not saying goodbye entirely, but letting go of the way we found it…and building from there.

None of this house/structure ever made sense. But in the same way I knew our tiny Brooklyn apartment was our home (despite not getting it the first time we saw it) and that Phoebe was absolutely our cat (after I attempted to adopt another cat instead), I felt the same kind of fate about this place, too.

That we had/have something important to do together.

Sharing the insides of this building—not just the original architecture and personal history of the space, but also how my family and I have made it our home over the past six years—has been a little like showing the world my underwear drawer. Exposing myself and also my personal chaos ~~thrifting museum~~ in a way that I’m not really sure I want to share, maybe for fear it won’t be appreciated or loved the way that I love it. And yet, everyone who has stepped inside or stayed with us at our funny little getaway has been as enchanted as we are.

Because like so many of the things I cherish most in my life, this building has revealed something to me that’s hard to see from the outside. Like the discarded things I find on the sidewalk or in a thrift store, it’s always like I'm tuning in to a special frequency + listening to what something a little bit freaky is trying to tell me.

The Dr.’s Inn (what we named it) and I speak that same freaky language.

What it was + a little like what it might become (courtesy of Dwell).

Left, the entryway where patients originally checked in with reception and right, a closeup that we will preserve somewhere special in the renovation.

I never went about “decorating” this historically commercial space. Knowing it was going to be a transition home, its only requirement was to be safe and cozy for our family while we made plans for the mowed lawn next door (you know how that turned out:).

I know so many of you have lived in temporary spaces and experienced their challenges, too, be they sublets, half-finished buildouts, or a home being prepped and sold for a declining relative. And yet, despite the quirkiness or REAL obstacles these not-quite-a-home spaces present, they also—inevitably—bring us gifts, too.