In the summer of 2018, fresh off a breakup and mid-plummet into a mental spiral, I booked a reading with a psychic on the Westside of LA. I found her the way most modern pilgrims find their gurus: on Yelp, buoyed by five-star testimonials from strangers who claimed she had changed their lives. I was living in New York City at the time, making a living as an “influencer,” modeling for brands like Calvin Klein and speaking at universities about sexual health, ping-ponging between coasts in an effort to outrun myself—which, spoiler alert, does not work. In an insomniac haze, I decided this perfumed oracle might possess an instruction manual to escape my suffering.

She told me—I remember because I recorded the session—that I would move into a house in Los Angeles draped in bougainvillea. That I would change careers and begin writing. That I would finish a book in this bougainvillea-draped house. And that the butterflies flitting through my garden would be my deceased mother dropping by.

I had no intention of moving to Los Angeles. I disliked LA in the casual, superior way most New Yorkers do. But I was in need of a change. From the outside, my life was put together, but I had a habit of chasing the wrong people, again and again, and no real understanding yet of why. I was cycling through volatile relationships and struggling with what I would later understand as borderline personality disorder.

I swallowed every word the psychic told me. Then I boarded a flight back to JFK, returned to my life, and filed the prophecy away.

Two years later, in August, at the height of the pandemic, I fled New York for a house near the Hollywood sign, where I quarantined with my Persian cat. I had only ever visited LA in weeklong increments, and this was my first extended stay.

Each day I walked the same route through the hills. And each day I slowed, almost involuntarily, in front of a pink house just down the road. It was for sale. The lawn was dead; trees had grown wild, strangling the windows; there was a chain-link fence surrounding the property with all the warmth of a correctional facility. And yet, as if instructed by fate or my former psychic, it felt like it was waiting for me.

I told myself I was merely curious. I told myself I liked the shade of pink. I told myself I was gathering material, which is what writers (which I now am) say when they are circling something they can’t yet admit they want. I punched in the listing agent’s number and asked for a tour.

Ten steps up the path during my first visit, my heart performed a small somersault. This was it. Eureka. I hadn’t known I was looking, which is often the clearest sign that you are.

The house was in utter disrepair. It had sat empty for seven years after the previous owner died of old age—peacefully, I was told. His adult sons had held on to it until they were ready to sell. A thick film coated every surface. The floors creaked beneath my feet.

It had been subjected to a deeply unfortunate remodel sometime in the 1970s: mirrored ceilings, mustard shag carpeting, brown bidets with gold hardware, a dark and dispiriting kitchen clad in taupe and brown tile. The listing agent informed me, almost cheerfully, that developers were circling, eager to demolish the house and split the lot. She added, with equal cheer, that it was already in escrow. I felt an irrational, almost moral obligation to intervene.

I frantically dialed my money manager with the question adults ask when they are about to do something reckless: Could I afford it? The numbers were discussed in calm, responsible tones. I had never wanted something so badly in my life. I decided to submit a lowball offer, assuming it would amount to nothing.

A few days later, the call came. The previous buyers had walked away. “Congratulations,” the agent said.

I nicknamed the house Slippers, after the pink exterior. Somewhere between escrow and demolition permits, I got back together with an ex-boyfriend in New York. When I eventually moved full-time to Los Angeles and we began a period of long-distance dating, he would visit and survey the house—still very much in progress—with visible concern. At one point, gesturing toward the garage, he asked, incredulously, “You expect me to live in a house with a pink garage?” He’d raised a fair question, though possibly not the one he intended.

By then, I had committed fully to the pink. Pink exterior, pink living room, pink bedroom, pink garage. I considered, briefly, softening it. Reducing the sparkle. Making aesthetic concessions in the name of romantic harmony. But the relationship, as it turned out, didn’t last. The pink-sparkle epoxy garage floor did.

The first time I walked through the door, I could see her future with unsettling clarity: aqua walls in the entry, leopard carpet underfoot, a deep fuchsia living room peeking through an archway, my bedroom awash in pink. I have rarely been so certain of anything.

In all, the remodel took three years, plus an additional year navigating permits—a bureaucratic purgatory that tests even the most patient person. Wherever possible, I restored rather than replaced. The original doors were salvaged and refinished, along with many of the windows—except those beyond saving, sun-rotted after decades of exposure. It is almost always cheaper to replace than to restore. Practicality would have suggested new everything. But I felt a duty to a house that had stood for a century, that it might stand for another. (I also smuggled in a few modern indulgences. Heated floors, for instance. If you are wavering on radiant heat in a bathroom, allow me to remove all suspense: Do it.)

The original hand-notched wood-beam ceiling in the living room was preserved, its dark brown tone a deliberate rebuke to minimalism. I envisioned a fully tiled kitchen that nodded to the house’s origins but with heated floors (again) and my long-coveted Lacanche range. I also kept the original iron stair railing, which feels alarmingly low. Families lived here before me and survived. I decided I would too.

My collections of vintage china, porcelain dolls, and taxidermy would be proudly displayed. Slippers would be arrayed as in a kind of grown-up dollhouse: girlish, eccentric, deliberate. My influences were many: Tony Duquette, Madeleine Castaing, Dorothy Draper, Mario Buatta.

When my interior designer, Emily Eerdmans, came on board, she said the best clients have a strong point of view. I arrived with binders. Thousands of references. Strong feelings about shades versus curtains. (Valances are something else entirely, as I was firmly informed.) Together, we embraced the fantasy of 1950s Hollywood glamour filtered through the 1920s. We custom-colored wallpaper and silk upholstery to achieve the exact shade we desired, testing samples obsessively in shifting light like scientists.

Months later, my new rock star boyfriend walked through the front door, took in the aqua entry, the leopard carpet, the pinks and reds. I braced myself. He looked at me and exclaimed wildly, “Wow. I want you to redo my house for me!”

There is a particular relief in having your most outlandish instincts not merely tolerated but celebrated. My boyfriend stood in my Technicolor fantasia and saw not excess, not madness, but vision. In that moment, something fell into place. To be loved is to be seen.

In this story: hair, Ramsell Martinez; makeup, Courtney Hart; tailor, Susie Kourinian for Susie’s Custom Designs. Produced by Katrina Gagnon.