Simply Perfect to expand interior design displays at 8th and Railroad location

The timing was right for Penny Klinedinst to expand her home design, decor, lifestyle and apparel store at the 8th and Railroad shopping center.

Klinedinst is expanding Simply Perfect into the former Rug and Relic space next door, which closed its doors in 2020, to help showcase more of her interior design work.

“This has always been in the back of our mind,” Klinedinst said of the expansion.

And this isn’t new for Klinedinst — space has meant everything to her store.

While Klinedinst started her interior design work in 1999, she opened Simply Perfect in 2006 as a retail side of her business. The store grew from 800 square feet to more than 8,000 square feet, to fit not only the growing retail side of Simply Perfect, but the apparel side of her business, Threads. She also bought Plum’s Cooking Company a few doors down in 2016.

But as retail demanded more space, her first passion of interior design was pushed to the back. Her interior design studio, where she plans and creates spaces for her clients, is hidden in a 400 square foot room at the back of Simply Perfect.

“No one knows about that work because it’s basically in back in a closet,” Klinedinst said. “No one sees all the beautiful things we do there, other than when we do Parade of Homes or stage homes.”

Klinedinst and her employees were “working on top of each other” in the former space, she said. The expansion into the Rug and Relic space will add nearly 3,000 square feet, all planned to be used for interior design space and to showcase their work.

“You aren’t able to really process each client the way it should be in the studio,” she said. “I think this expansion will give us room to be able to spread out and create more.”

Klinedinst plans to open the space in spring 2021.

The additional space will come at a time when people are focusing on home projects during the pandemic, Klinedinst said. Residential building projects and renovations soared in 2020, proving that people are rethinking how “important their private space is.”