The Thursday Show: Rue editorial director Kelli Lamb on rebuilding after the LA wildfires. Plus: Burke Decor goes dark

24:48Or is there so much more that you can drive yourself today? And should we be excited about the fact that so much of this power is now in your own hands, particularly as it turns out, if you can make a darn good video. Yeah, yeah. I really have seen so many more designers get into video. I mean, like people have very much gotten the memo. Like my Instagram feed is like a good 50, 60 % video. Now that may just be the algorithm showing me what it wants to show me, but I do think that that's a thing. And that's, you know, that's really the story of media in general is just, you know, democratization.

25:23and more people have individual power. You know, just to, like, you know, linger a little bit longer on the print thing, I think one other interesting, sorry, I have to. One of the interesting things about it is, like, another change that has happened is, like, how much more designers are expected to front the cost of the photo shoot? Because, you know, if you look at AD in the 90s, like, it wasn't the designer paying the photo cost. That was, you know, Paige Renz signing that check. And that has really changed. But the funny thing is that, like, we've all just sort of internalized, okay, designers have to pay for the photo shoot.

25:51But I'd say it's huge shifting of the responsibility for who pays for what. And it really changes the dynamic in a lot of ways that I feel like haven't even really fully played out yet. So it really just has changed a lot. And I do still think print is worth it. But increasingly, I wonder, is there an element of nostalgia that we're hanging on to that in 20 years is going to look kind of quaint? It's funny, Fred, because I just finished listening to the audio book of When the Going Was Good, Graydon Carter's book about his time at Conde Nast. a book I highly recommend. And you think back to when magazines had these huge budgets, to your point, and some of the greatest photographers in the world would be sent to photograph your projects.

26:36You were just in a different pantheon, if you will. That whole dynamic has changed. There's a certain melancholy in all of that. We can cry about that, and I often do, but we can celebrate the fact that you've got a phone, you've got the ability to perhaps get yourself in front of some editor that might run your project just based on some shots you can take yourself, or you might just be able to put them up on your own social media and drive it for yourself. And how empowering. Yeah, no, I think that's probably the right take if depressing for people in our line of work. I do love 80s AD. You know, it's like Jonathan Franzen wrote the article.

27:20Ansel Adams took the photos. It is crazy extravagance. And, you know, those days are gone, but we have to look forward to the new. And there's so many more different ways to get published. Caroline's article has, you know, international publications. What about video in this way and that way? So there's lots more ways to do it. And I think we should try and celebrate that through tears and move on with our lives. But it's a great article. So we'll certainly link it in the show notes. Yeah, absolutely. And another reason to pick up the issue of BOH, speaking of print publications that you don't want to be without.

27:52Moving on, Fred, we're going to talk about the panic industry boom. Yes. For the New York Times, Coralie Craft wrote about how doomsday preppers are quickly becoming a growing market for home renovators. But it's not just doomsday preppers. Some of these panic rooms and bunkers are pretty luxurious. Seems like quite a bit of money is being spent on some panic rooms. And and it turns out it's not just the one percent. They're the they're the everyman panic rooms that you can have now. I know. It's kind of like, you know, there was this survey in 2023 that said a third of American adults were prepping for a doomsday scenario, spending a collective 11 billion over 12 months.

28:31I think I maybe bought some canned food during COVID. It's probably still good. So I'm a very small part of that 11 billion. Yeah, I don't know. This is an interesting story because obviously, like, you know, there's a whole industry that's not unrelated to our own of people who build these very elaborate bunkers and panic rooms. And there was, you know, the New York Times story, you know, published a lot of really, frankly, impressive feats of engineering. There was one home that had like a moat that could light on fire, which I was frankly found a little terrifying. We talked about this before we were recording.

29:01But in 2009 at the Kipps Bay in New York here, William T. Gorgas designed, you know, a safe room or a panic room. And I remember going to that room and thinking like, ha ha ha, this is funny. Like, isn't it sort of ironic, like to have a luxurious panic room? And now I feel like, you know, 15 years later, it's not so funny anymore. It really is. It really is a thing. Well, what's interesting about it is that the conversation at first sounds kind of nutty about, oh, all these people who are preparing for the end of the world and building these spaces. But it turns out there were actually a lot of different, very reasonable uses.

29:37Many people in California had a special safe room or what they hoped was going to be a fireproof room where they had stored a lot of their art. And luckily, some of that survived. Different people who live in tornado areas, it turns out, can benefit from having an underground space where they can go at the time of a big storm or a big tornado. And also, it might also increase the resale value of your home if this nice amenity is added. Yes, it used to be swimming pools, but now it's a safe room or a bit of a bunker add-on. So, I mean, turns out there's lots of reasons to have this, and it's not just the doomsday scenario.

30:20I don't know. I got to be honest. I found this story a little bit disheartening. I feel like we had an item a few months ago or maybe last year about how, you know, people don't build porches in America. And there's lots of reasons why. But I sort of felt like part of it is sort of the death of this sort of social experience of living in a neighborhood and sitting on your porch and waving against people if they go by. And, you know, this is just the flip side of that. You're not building a porch anymore. you're hiding from your neighbors in a fortified bunker. And I do think it is a little bit indicative of, you know, all kinds of depressing things about the, you know, breakdowns in society and our divisions in this country.

30:55So I'm going to flip it back to you to turn this into a funny, funny end to our podcast here. But I did feel like, you know, while we can sort of marvel and laugh at some of the, you know, clever things that people do and some of the interesting engineering, I do feel like there's something a little bit dark in the story. And I'm hopeful, no offense to the people in the panic industry, the panic room industry, but I do hope that these numbers go down in the years ahead. Yeah, well, I totally understand where you're coming, Fred. And it's not that I disagree. But when one designer wrote to me and told me that they had multiple projects going on, building out these spaces, I thought, you know, good for you, designers.

31:31If that's what the client wants, darn it, you know, you come up with it. But I think that designers are expert at stepping up to a challenge. And this sounds like a real design challenge. And that's my positive spin, Fred. And I'm going to stick with it. Okay? How many pocket squares are there in the Scully bunker? That's what I want to know. Well, that's the thing. Should I be moving my wardrobe in there now? I don't know. I might. I might have to. All right. That's it for the news, but there's plenty more to check out on businessofhome.com, including May's Can't Miss Design events and the best debuts from Milan Design Week.

32:03We'll be back in a minute, but first, a quick break.

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33:14And we're back. I'm joined now by Kelly Lamb, the editorial director of Rue magazine. Kelly, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk to you. Let's talk a little bit about your lengthy career, it seems like, at Roo Magazine and how you got there. And we'll talk a little bit about what Roo is in general. So take it away. Sure. I believe I've been with Roo since 2012, which seems inaccurate because that seems like it was so long ago. Couldn't possibly have been that long, but there you are. And Rue was founded in 2010 by a great team of design bloggers. Crystal Palachuk sort of led the helm and I started working for her when I first moved to San Francisco.

34:01It had previously been online only and then it kind of naturally shifted to a daily content site, which we still have today. when Crystal was ready to become an interior designer full-time and step away. It was sort of natural that I was there ready to carry the torch into the new chapter of it. So we had that for a few years. And then in 2020, everything went nuts. Perhaps you heard tell. I heard there was a lot going on at that time. But it was an excellent opportunity to to pivot and take a really big swing. I've been close friends with Danny CEO for many years. He is our now publisher. So he purchased the company from the previous publisher and then gave me the opportunity to either work for him or be business partners.

34:51And I love him, but I decided part, a partnership was probably better. So I invested my own money and we launched it as a print publication in 2021. So we've been doing that for a few years and it's been wonderful and really well received. Well, and remind us who Danny is, was, what his background is, because he's a pretty big name in the industry. Yeah. So Danny, I always joke, I call him the green guru. He's been an eco-living specialist for years and years. He's had his own TV show on NBC called Naturally Danny Seo, a print publication that is of the same name. And it's all eco-friendly design, vegetarian and vegan recipes.

35:37So that's kind of his market and he does it really well. Currently, he's part of Drew's crew on the Drew Barrymore Show. So he's in everyone's households a few times a week, it seems. But he's an expert in publishing. We have a third A third partner, Barry Rosenblum, he handles the printing and distribution. Danny is our publisher and head of sales. And then I cover all of the editorial and make all of the decisions on what content we're putting out, what it looks like, kind of the look and feel of the magazine. Yeah, no, no, absolutely. And I wonder in the context of what to bringing this print publication to life at a time where a lot of print publications were going away in the home space, and perhaps that was the opportunity.

36:27Because you talk to a lot of people, designers especially, who talked about missing so many shelter-related publications. Oh, there used to be so many, and now there aren't nearly as many. And so we prize the ones that are still around perhaps even more. I think that it was good timing or maybe ignorance that we thought we could do it. But it more so came from, and I know I speak for Danny as well. And he has a long history in publishing, going back various publications throughout his career. But we both just have such a love of magazines. I would say my entire youth, teenage years, college years was just curled up with magazines.

37:10So it kind of was driven from that, of not letting this beloved pastime. For me, there's just nothing better than having a magazine that you haven't cracked open yet. Like, oh, getting to enjoy that experience. And so it was really important that we bring that feeling to every issue. Well, when you think about who you're writing for and to, do you have a very specific image in your head? I think, yes. One of the ways that I approach editorial, and it's coming from a long history of just loving magazines, is I want it to feel really welcoming. I want a variety of styles, a variety of locations.

37:49So our focus is North America, but when I'm putting together an issue, I'm really dialed in that it's not too California heavy. That's my personal network, but I know our readers are all across North America. So are we making sure that it's well represented by region, that there's a great diversity of people featured? So it's always this lens of it being for everyone. And the voice is also very welcoming. I don't know if you've ever read an article about a home tour and felt bullied by it. Like, oh, they're fancy. I always think of that. You can read things and think, oh, I couldn't see myself living there.

38:29This isn't for me. I want everyone who buys a copy of the magazine to see themselves reflected there, whether it's their personal taste or it reminds them of a place that they knew ones. are just very, very welcoming, joyful, friendly is really important to me when creating it as a product. Okay. Well, so perfect segue then. So I guess a couple of years ago now, you actually opened up your own home to people and shared your Spanish Revival home in Southern California and talked about both the process of buying the home and then thinking about, right, how to put it together? Tell me a little bit about that and what you shared with people.

39:12Sure. Well, my husband and I bought our first home in 2021. It was a very long, long process. We'd been saving for many years. He had been saving since he started his professional career because Los Angeles is a famously affordable place. You have to wait a while to be able to get a home there. So we waited. We were really patient. We were really careful. And we looked, I think we We toured over 70 houses and made offers on 12 before we got this one. And it was our dream home more than we ever could have imagined. A Spanish revival in Altadena. I'm not a huge fan of change. So I thought of it.

39:53This is our forever home. We didn't have an interest in buying a starter home or flipping something. It was my love of home and my love of the story of home applied to my own life, too. So we worked with Patrick Mazziarski, and he was just this incredible rising talent that I felt could translate my husband's style on my own. And it was a lot of fun. I shared quite a bit on social media, but I reserved a lot of it for the magazine and sharing the process and sharing. It's very intimate. It's kind of awkward when everyone can see your bedroom or your kitchen. So it was a vulnerable thing to share our own space.

40:30but one we were really proud of and one that I thought kind of embodied my approach to the magazine of designing for yourself. The kitchen was pretty controversial. It was all black with really bold tile. Some people really loved it and some less so, but that was a message of it shouldn't be defined by trends. It should be defined by the way you live. It was really a really big privilege to be able to renovate the home and then also share it with everyone. It was a nice way to connect with our audience. Well, and I think you said to that point you were just making that you didn't want to think about resale.

41:06You didn't want to think about the next owner. This is your forever home. We're going to make this as we wish. And to heck with all those people who are going to write in and say they don't like the choices we made in the kitchen. Which it sounds like some people did, right? I mean... I think the funniest critique, as someone said, with the dark countertops and the really dark millwork that you wouldn't be able to see a spider in there. And I did take that to heart. It's possible that they were. And you thought, hey, good tip. Good tip. Yeah. Yeah, we never thought of resale. I've warned you that I have dark humor.

41:40I always used to joke that we would never move and I would be buried in the backyard. But now I'm quite grateful I wasn't. So yeah, it's a shift in perspective for that. I don't know if you knew from the start that you would share it on the pages of the magazine at one point. I don't know if while you were going through the renovation process and making your design choices, if you were thinking in the back of your mind, am I going to open this up? Am I going to share this with our readers? Yeah, it was hard. My husband, Tim, is much more private than I am. And he works with a huge team. He works in animation.

42:19And so he's in lots of meetings. And in the past, when we had shared a past apartment in San Francisco, there was some discomfort with people at work saying, oh, I saw your apartment online. So there was some hesitation. And then as it came together, it was a really unique ability to be able to offer my own editorial insight and connect with both designers that I would feature in the future, as well as our readers, just to know that I was going through the same thing and sharing my perspective in hopes that it would translate to the other homes that we're featuring as well. It sounded like you really wanted to help people feel comfortable in making their own choices, yes?

43:03Yes. Yeah. home and right about how they lived and it sounds like something that you you felt very personally connected to that yeah i think i've been doing it for so long and and i'm sure you can relate the the trends as they cycle through you start to see a lot of identical spaces that feel if i'm going through a lot of submissions sometimes i'll think i was just looking at this and then discovered no everyone is just using the same beautiful light fixture it is beautiful and there's a reason why so many people are using it but I wanted my my husband as an artist and me with strong opinions that to choose what we really love and kind of prove the point that that is what makes the most interesting beautiful design is the personality the the items that tell a story or like I had chosen in the dining room this really beautiful orange glass chandelier from Soho Home, and it matched one of the stained glass windows that was original to the house.

44:01And so tying those in, it felt kind of funky, a little bit 70s, not the expected choice. And yet for me, it made so much sense. This will be tie in the color story through the home and tie to the original architecture and just things that were a nod that maybe only we knew or we admired and being able to share that. Because that's what I think makes the home is in your own space when you can look and you know the story or you know the place you were when you bought it or these little elements. It's fun to be able to have, be able to finally tell that real personal edge in my writing as well. So poignantly, I guess we finally have to share with people that might not already know, Kelly, what happened.

44:44So as I say, you wrote about this in April of 23, shared your home and brought everyone in. And then sadly in January of this year, well, you can pick it up. Yeah. So if you didn't catch earlier, the home was in Altadena. And on the night of the 7th is when the Eaton fire broke out, which was a few miles from our home. And I always feel this sense of, I don't know if it's a sense of feeling maybe a bit defensive, but we were really far from the hills. We were in a very urban area. Neighbors directly to the north and south of us both moved there to be somewhere that was more fire safe. So that shows kind of how unexpected or unprepared we were for this as a reality.

45:34And there's always fire. It's part of living in California, but we really thought we were just far enough away. We could see the glow of the hillside from our front porch and decided to, we'd obviously need to go to a hotel. And so I grabbed the things that they tell you to grab, which are like your passport or your tax documents. And that's kind of had been drilled into my head of when you have a go bag ready, that's what you're taking. And that's not correct. You should be thinking of the items that you can't live without the artwork or family photos. And it just wasn't in our minds that we would never return home.

46:12So we took a few pieces of art, a few small heirlooms, but most of the stuff we really believed would be safer in our home. So I have a lot of memories of looking at everything and saying, well, I don't want that to get stolen from the car in the hotel parking lot. That was where my head was at. So we just left it and we left and we got a call, I think at about 530 or 6 in the morning from our next door neighbor. He called and just said, I'm so sorry. I never thought this would happen to any of us, but it's all gone. And so he was there kind of as the fire went into our eaves and took the whole house.

46:48So the next time we went was on that Thursday. And we, quite frankly, should not have been there. The gas was still spewing out of the gas line. It was too soon to be there. It was probably not very safe. But it was this need that we had to see for ourselves to believe that it all had been gone. And our whole street, I mean, the footage you see on the news, there's no comparing to seeing that with your own eyes. And seeing our whole street gone and remembering the flowers that bloomed in this front yard or the dog that lived at this house. You know, all these little details. And there was a point as we were driving through where I had no idea where we were.

47:31And I realized that it was a street I had walked every day, but with no landmarks. You can't even tell where you are. So it's really quite shocking what happened and the level that it happened to the community of Altadena. And of course, the Palisades experiencing the same thing to the West. It's really shocking. Even though you prepare for fire, you don't prepare for a whole town to be gone. I'm a very sensitive person, a very empathetic person at the same time. and I can't help but think of the loss that you know everything that we lost it really weighs at you like my husband lost all of his artwork he'd created since art school sketchbooks that were kind of his journal of everywhere he'd traveled he's always sketching the people in the places and it it all was just gone but my mind immediately goes to every single family that how could so many people be experiencing a loss of that magnitude at the same time and wondering what was their morning routine or what do they miss the most about their homes?

48:34Because that's what we're really, the hardest part has been building those new routines and remembering how good we had it. Everyone must be feeling that way or missing, you know, the flower. Well, I received a text from our neighbor, our flowers are blooming, but there's no one there to enjoy them. So the rose bushes are coming back and the wild flowers I planted in the backyard have sprouted up. But normally I'd be admiring them from my office window. And now it's just there among destruction. It's a really hard thing to wrap your head around. It is such a hard thing to wrap your head around.

49:09And I wonder how you even thought about moving forward and what you wanted to do in the immediate aftermath of all of this and honestly finding the strength? Well, as humans, you're not given a choice. You just move forward. So that was the only option was to get a plan in place. I mean, we packed so sparsely. So we were suddenly faced, and we were luckier than most. Our former landlord from our place in Silver Lake called and said, our Airbnb is empty. You can go there now. So we had a place to land while we figured out what would be next in a larger picture of where we would go. But it was so strange.

49:58I packed an overnight bag thinking we were just going to a hotel. And so it's funny now, but the only T-shirt I packed was a Spice Girls T-shirt. It's like something really dark about like, this is it. I'm going to have to go to High Point soon. I'm going to have to go to market in just my Spice Girls t-shirt. So you start to kind of grapple with that reality. And so I posted on Instagram and people were really gracious. And I said, please just put a pause in the work emails for a moment and stepped away. I gave myself, I think, two weeks of just sorting out what our next plans would be. And then the nature of the magazine is we have deadlines and we have people counting on us.

50:46And so Danny, my business partner, gave me the option to either cancel our spring issue and just pick up again in the summer or delay it. And I chose to delay it because my work is part of my identity. And so it kind of felt like it wasn't an option to have that taken to, even though it would just be a pause. It was really, you know, we had already had everything lined up. I didn't want to disappoint designers or my team. So I gave it a couple of weeks and then just got to work, I guess. But it's clear I had a lot of people step up and just kind of carry the weight for me. And in a way, it was a nice distraction because everything was different.

51:30And so to have something the same still there felt really grounding for me, I think. to be able to, you know, the magazine was still running the same. The people were the same. So even though my life was thrown to the wind, we could at least kind of ground in that. And at some point, I'm fairly certain we made this choice while we were still in a state of shock, but we relocated to McCall, Idaho, which is closer to my family, closer to my husband's. I don't actually remember making the choice, But at some point, and that is a great way to describe kind of that post-fire reality. There's this term fire brain where your decisions are either really complicated or paralyzing.

52:14Like I went to buy a second pair of shoes because I had only worn the ones I had. And I just stared at this wall of New Balance shoes. And I thought, I don't know who I am. Should they be green? Should they be pink? And I left without a pair of shoes because it was so paralyzing to even make a single choice. in those early days. And yet somehow we made the decision to just drive to Idaho and land here. And I think there were a few factors of, you know, the air quality was so awful. We felt like we couldn't, we felt like we couldn't breathe. We had pretty bad PTSD and we just needed a place where we could hunker and not feel the chaos of Los Angeles for a little bit.

52:54So we landed here. The snow is finally starting to melt. And so I like it a little bit more. It was hard. We don't ski. I used to snowboard. So living in a ski town during ski season when you don't is not great. So now that the snow is melting and we're able to walk and hike, it feels kind of like a comfortable place for this chapter. So it's very slow and quiet and we can kind of sort through next steps. I think we'll be here a few more months before finding something temporary in Los Angeles and we will be rebuilding. So we're working with Patrick again. He has a great new design build company called Council Design and his partner, Waleed, also lost his home in the fires.

53:44So he's not only driving a handful of rebuilds in the Altadena area, but he's doing it for his own family. And so there's some comfort there and that we know we've worked with them before. We know their skills and we also know that there's some empathy or some shared experience. So we'll work with them and rebuild. Hopefully if the tariffs, the tariffs of it all might complicate that for not just us, but all of Altadena, all of the Palisades, it will be really interesting to see how we navigate that reality given the current reality as well. Well, and has anyone, has anyone informed you of such?

54:23I mean, has anybody said, well, gee, with the tariffs, a lot more of the lumber or what's necessary to rebuild is just going to be more expensive than it was? Yes. Yeah. I think that's the general consensus is just to expect that it will be more. The insurance has been so confusing, which I think they do by design. They make it very, very confusing, but there's some confusion as far as being the limits that will be paid out will it be enough um and will the short of it it won't be for most people the insurance will not cover the full rebuild for most people um especially with rising costs and at the same time all we can do is the same as what i said earlier you just have to keep moving forward so we're just moving forward with the the belief that we are able to rebuild and we'll be able to have our home again.

55:18And that is also a privilege to have immediately known a great design team that could get to work with us on that. A lot of our neighbors aren't sure where to even begin, and that has been really hard. There's so many amazing resources that are coming together and building plans for people to select from, but it's still, it feels very much like there's no information coming. We're just all having to figure it out as it goes each day and week, and now months that we're into it. In thinking, so here you are at the editorial helm of this home publication and having spent so many years thinking and writing so deeply and personally about the meaning of home and all that it represents.

56:06I wonder if you can speak a little bit to how your perspective or your perhaps even deeper understanding has been shaped by this terrible tragedy. It will take a lot of work to not let it harden us or change my personality or change my values. There's a lot of anger that something like this could happen. it's every negative emotion loss and grief anger sadness fear I felt for the first few weeks after I thought I could never live in California at all again even though that Altadena was what home most was and we were kind of on the same page of maybe we just have to leave all together and as time has gone on that has of course softened and we want to be part of rebuilding the community and getting it back to what it was.

57:03I had some concerns about being able to do the magazine. Would it be painful to look at thousands of images of really beautiful homes and knowing what went into them with maybe this pessimistic thought nagging that goes, well, it could all disappear. Because that had never occurred to me that our house could just completely disappear. We thought maybe a tree would fall on it and that would be the worst. So there's this new element of having to clutch on to hope and the meaning of home even further. And hold on to that in both my work, but also my personal life. And when I say I will take work to not change my personality, everything I processed was always done from home.

57:48When I traveled for work, I would change my background on my phone to a photo of something from home. I'm a really big homebody and so there's a cruelty and now having to process the biggest loss in my life from somewhere strange there's something about that that feels unfair and then this perspective that that's that's just what happened there's no changing it there's no I can't become resentful I can't become a very angry person I have to hold on to that optimism and hold on to what I love about home and know that I can create it again and that our home specifically was the story of us and we're still here so it'll just be new items and new art we lost some really good art from friends so that's tough but um one of the artists we lost uh a few pieces from is this amazing painter Woodrow White and he's a friend of ours and you have this strange thing when you lose everything that you felt we felt like we failed the art we didn't take it we left it behind and we weren't good stewards of it and he laughed it off and said there will always be more art and so we've been kind of using that as what would carry us through is there will be more art there will be another home there will be we'll toil over window covering decisions once again but it will be there and the the feeling will be there and i hope i can continue to convey that through the magazine too, despite my own perspective of that perhaps sometimes these places are temporary.

59:22Well, I wonder to that point, does it, and maybe you don't know yet because you haven't got, right? But I'm wondering if it's changing how different stories resonate for you that you want to share with readers in looking through all these different projects. Is there something that you want stories going forward to tell, to talk about, to share, to somehow be perhaps even more meaningful than they were before? I think my eye has always been drawn to the spaces that make you curious about who lives there. And so we always look for one weird thing in a room. Is there something that you go, well, that's different or that's not expected?

1:00:08It definitely is kind of making me dig my heels in on that concept a little bit more of the spaces that are really personal versus just showrooms, I guess. And, you know, that can be really beautiful and it doesn't necessarily take away if something is really impeccably designed, but it's always that curiosity. And, you know, when you're flipping through a magazine, you do latch on to these different, oh, that art piece reminds me of something I had in my childhood home or look at their record collection, or they probably have really great parties in the summer. Like, so those elements that are truly more personal and you can tell that there's just beautiful lives being lived in these spaces, that is more what I'm interested in sharing versus just these really on-trend, beautifully designed spaces.

1:00:56But things with soul and things with personality, I think, will continue to drive my editorial decisions. And it sounds as if you are going to be at the center of a lot of all of this and perhaps can be a powerful voice and someone who can perhaps help a lot of people get through this in the way that you're trying to get through it yourself with your good sense of humor that you're going to bring to it, right? And maybe help make it easier for some other people too. Yeah, it will be interesting. There's still so much to discover as far as any regulations or requirements that the LA County will put in place.

1:01:36For now, our very first step is we're just making the structure. It's the same square footage, but narrower, so it won't be close. It'll go back further on the lot so that it gives distance between the houses. and that's step one of what will be many many decisions I'm sure that consider urban firestorms as they are now as they are now called because it was not you always hear California wildfires and even that has been a change of it was definitely more of an urban firestorm than a wildfire but for now I'll continue to I still know my my wheelhouse is is the writing and with words. And so it'll be our great, our great team that is really helping with a lot of that.

1:02:19And as I've always done with Rue, kind of highlighting their, that talent versus tooting my own horn, I guess. Well, I understand completely. And as I say, whether you, whether you necessarily want to take all of this on, it is, it is something that I think many will be looking to you for. So I wish you all of the best with that. And I thank you for making the time to talk with me about all of it. Yes. Thank you, Dennis.

1:02:55And we're back. We're getting to the end of the show here. But before we go, we'd like to take a second to highlight anything going on in the industry that might have caught our eye. Fred, what caught your eye? Substack caught my eye, as it seemingly always does. And this is my part of the show where I talk about Substack. I first of all I just Kelly Wurstler launched a sub stack a few months ago and you know I at the time I was thinking like is this going to be a permanent thing is this just a little bit of an experiment but it's been really cool to see how she's really sticking with it she's talking about rebuilding you know the home that she lost in the Malibu fire she's talking about that on her sub stack which is called Wurstler World so it's been just cool just to see that you know be a consistent thing at the same time I've noticed that this other sub stacker Laura O 'Reilly who has a fashion publication called Magazine, I think it's pronounced, M-A-G-A-S-I-N, or Magazine, is doing a lot more home content.

1:03:44And I saw that Roman Williams Guild is doing a sale, and they're exclusively launching it with her. So they're choosing to go through Substack a little bit. I feel like every day there's a Substack that has a new ad deal in the home world. So this is my rah-rah Substack segment, and I'm going to stick with it. But I do feel like it's continuing to gain traction. So check it out if you're not already. Absolutely. So many good sub stacks out there. I'm an increasingly big consumer of sub stack information. Thanks to you, Fred. Well, there you go. You're welcome. What caught your eye this week, Dennis?

1:04:14A couple of things caught my eye. One was, you know, I got word that some of the tickets had already sold out for the May 3rd ticking tent event, which woke me up to having to buy a ticket for myself. I thought, oh, my gosh, I've already missed the 11 o 'clock time slot, which is absolutely when I was planning to be there. But I quickly ran to the computer and bought my ticket, and it sounds like it's going to be a crowded affair out there in New Preston, Connecticut on May 3rd. So I look forward to seeing many listeners and design community members there at the Ticking Tent. Good for them that they're doing so well with the ticket sales.

1:04:54Cheers to that. Yeah, absolutely. Another person who is talking candidly about rebuilding from the California fires, who's going to be one of the panelists in my High Point panel, is a friend of the show, Mikkel Welsh, who has actually graciously agreed to do a little video series with Veranda Magazine. You can see it on their social site. And Mikkel is sort of taking you through. Poor Mikkel moves from New York to California. And then, yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, and one of the nicest guys in the world. Wish him all of the best. And he is trying to put a positive spin on it and sharing with everyone the choices that he's making about rebuilding.

1:05:36So we wish him and so many of our community that suffered as a result of the fires all of the best. All right. That's all the time we have today. Thanks so much for listening. If you want to keep up with the latest news, browse job listings, or take a workshop, visit us online at businessofhome.com. If you want to get in touch with the show, write to us at podcast at businessofhome.com. This episode was produced by Fred Nikolaus and Caroline Burke and edited by Michael Castaneda. I'm Dennis Scully. Have a great weekend, and we'll be back with you on Monday.