Lila Allen is a freelance writer and editor, and the founder of Wrong House, a new design publication covering interiors, architecture, product, and culture. As the former associate director for AD PRO, Architectural Digest’s trade vertical, and managing editor for Metropolis, she has spent years overseeing strategy and execution of content for the design industry. In addition to editing Wrong House, she is an active contributor to publications including The Architect’s Newspaper and Interior Design, as well as a consultant for designers and agencies on content and brand strategy.

7:30am: As a writer, it’s anathema to me to spring out of bed before the sun comes up and immediately put words to paper. My best hours tend to be in the afternoon and evening, sometimes later. Nevertheless, today I’m up at a righteous hour. I draw a bath. I moved into a hundred-year-old farmhouse in Stone Ridge, New York, about a year ago, and the shower wasn’t properly installed by the previous owner. Fortunately, we have a huge tub. Let me tell you, there is little more luxurious than taking a bath—soaking salts at all—before a morning Zoom. It actually feels a little subversive. While the bath is filling, a few emails I scheduled the night before send on my behalf. I used to be a person that emailed at weird hours (see: my nighttime habits), and I actually got popped for it a couple of times. So, I’m a scheduled-email girly now.

8:10am: Post-bath, I’m back to emailing in real time. I’m still getting a hang of the rhythm of my new freelance routine after four jam-packed years at a big publisher. There’s a lot of catching people up on the outlets I’m writing for, looking for potential stories, fielding and managing moderating opportunities, doing some brand consulting work, and, of course, writing. This morning, I’m checking back on a whitepaper I wrote a few weeks ago for a corporate architecture client. It was all about AI and its use in research settings—not my usual area of expertise, but eye-opening to me about where science and technology are headed, and how architecture and energy infrastructure will need to adapt.

9:00am: I’ve been creating a new verbal identity for Old Mine, a cabinetmaker and architectural millworker here in the Hudson Valley, and collaborating with their designer, Mallory Anita Lawson of Earth Ship Studio, on a refreshed website. I stress this to designers all the time, and it’s equally true for craftspeople: Having the right photography is a game-changer for your communications and storytelling. We’ll be receiving photo selects from Todd Midler this week. He took individual portraits, process shots, and environmentals of the Old Mine shop. I’m excited for the team to see the difference it makes in elevating the feel of their brand. For now, I’m drafting some text about Old Mine’s intake and installation process.

10:20am: A longtime collaborator of mine, Elizabeth Fazzare, was my houseguest this weekend with her fiancé, Owen. Elizabeth has written for me for years—she often co-edited trend reports with me when I was at AD PRO, and she knows the industry well. So, naturally, she was one of the first people I approached about contributing to Wrong House. Elizabeth and Owen need to catch a train about a half-hour from my house, so we start moseying that direction, towards the Hudson River.

10:50am: We stop for breakfast at Camp Kingston. My realtor and now friend, MJ Collum, is there. This is one of the best parts about having moved up here—I’m constantly running into people I love. While we’re sitting there, the writer and historian Sarah Archer files a feature for the first edition of Wrong House. It’s energizing seeing stories come in—Wrong House was just an idea a couple of months ago, and now it’s real. I want it to become a real platform where people feel emboldened to tell stories that don’t quite belong anywhere else. Issue 1 is themed “Fine, I’ll Do It Myself,” and it explores how and why we make things—whether we should or not. Sarah’s remit was to produce an oral history of the show “Trading Spaces.” She has reported the hell out of this story, connecting its rise to the subprime mortgage crisis and an early-2000s shift in trade relations with China. I dog-ear the rest of the piece for later.

Freakout Spot. Photography by Todd Midler.

11:20am: I drop Owen and Elizabeth at the Rhinecliff station, and head down to Freakout Spot, the record store my husband Rob Davis and I opened in late January. Rob taught kindergarten until this year, so it was a major shift for us—but he’s got one of the best minds for sourcing and recalling interesting music of anyone I’ve ever met. It’s a tiny space. Rather than trying to hide that, we leaned into it, opting for a psychedelic, chock-a-block interior. But there’s a fine line we have to toe—if we try to pile in too much, or things aren’t neat, it quickly spins into feeling more like a crazy guy’s basement. I look at some of the new arrivals with Rob, help tidy up, and take a few bulky items to our house.

12:30pm: I’m back at my laptop. Last week I started very casually posting on the @wrong__house Instagram account, which had about two followers at the time. Much to my surprise, things picked up quickly and I’m getting a lot of interest in what we’re cooking up, particularly since I posted an open call for Issue 2, “No Thoughts, Just Vibes.” It will consider emotional interiors and incoherence as method—basically, what happens when you design by feeling rather than by logic. Right now, I’m funding production myself, and it’s important to me that everyone gets a fair rate, even if it comes at a cost to me at the beginning.

I text a bit with Meggie Sullivan, a creative strategist, coach, publicist, and the founder of BIGMESS. We collaborate often, and right now are doing some brand visioning and copywriting work for the artist Anne Greene. I’m looking forward to witnessing Anne’s star rise in the coming years—she has a unique methodology to how she creates, and a point of view that feels iconoclastic and storybook all at once.

2:00pm: Vitra plans to host the launch of Wrong House at their swanky new Chinatown showroom next month. In anticipation of that, I’m trying to line up product donations and sponsorships, so I take a call with a beverage rep to pitch him our project. I then chat with my friend, the publicist Sara Griffin, who is helping me coordinate the event. We discuss hiring an event photographer and the programming flow for the evening. We still have lots of time, but I can already tell the end of August is going to be slammed.

3:00pm: The Wallpaper 400 came out today, and I’ve been perusing it all day. I try to keep tabs on these things—it’s my job to stay informed about the movers and shakers out there, so if I see a name I don’t know, I start to educate myself.

4:00pm: I head into my back yard to inspect my beehive. I just started beekeeping in May, and it has been a rewarding if harrowing experience. We had a bear attack about forty-eight hours in, but miraculously, the bees survived. This time of year it’s common for them to swarm, and robbing—outsider bees breaking and entering to steal honey—is a real issue. I document all of this on my Instagram, and folks are invested now. Thinking about it professionally, it’s good practice for social storytelling—something that does not come to me naturally.

5:00pm: After the hive check, I head back and start designing and ordering Wrong House totes for the launch event. My friend Bobby Michaud—a.k.a. Hand of Gosh—will be screenprinting them for me. Hopefully having some swag floating around New York City will earn us a few extra eyeballs.

Tarot evening, photo courtesy of Lila Allen.

6:30pm: Rob’s home from Freakout Spot. We catch up for a few minutes, and I head to the grocery store to pick up s’mores supplies, then trek to the house of my friend Kristen Buckels Cantrell. Mallory, the designer I’m working with on the Old Mine project, is meeting us too. The astrologer Chani Nicholas had posted that August 11 is a day for “planting seeds”—all three of us are in a spell of creative transition and new projects, so it feels like a good excuse to get together.

7:30pm: We harvest basil from Kristen’s garden and make a mean pesto. While the pasta cooks, we drink wine, pull tarot cards, and set intentions for the coming months—but really, it’s just a conversation among three close friends about our goals. I want to launch Wrong House and honor the other projects I’ve taken on, while also showing up meaningfully for family and friends. Meggie preaches it all the time: When you say something out loud, you become a force of nature. So I’m trying to say things out loud.

10:00pm: We wrap up our witchy night with s’mores in the backyard. Kristen hands over a box of wildflower seeds to be planted as soon as the temperatures start to drop. The first frost helps the seeds germinate. It won’t look like much at first, but, the label tells me: “Be patient; the perennial blooms will get better every year.”

This piece has been edited and condensed for clarity.

A Day in Stone Ridge with Design Writer Lila Allen