Today we’d like to introduce you to Lindsay Pennington.
Hi Lindsay, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Although originally I am from Kentucky, only twenty miles from the Tennessee border, school, work, and marriage took me to Los Angeles, where I started practicing law in my early 20s. As a young commercial litigator, I cut my teeth on subprime mortgage lending cases that emerged beginning in 2007 and narrowed my practice to focus on securities litigation. At my law firm, we were a small but close-knit team in the LA office.
Even when I “retired” from my legal career to be an interior designer, I kept in touch with my former coworkers through the years. One such coworker eventually became a partner at that law firm, and in late 2020, reached out to me to discuss a new project for him and his growing family. Would I be able to help decorate their newly built home? Of course! Was it going to be a problem that instead of moving to Brentwood, California, they were moving to Brentwood, Tennessee? Of course not!
So we embarked on finalizing the build-out and furnishing the roughly 10,000 square-foot family home my client’s family purchased in December 2020. The move-in date was early February 2021, and they had a second baby on the way, due in April 2021. Against these deadlines, we also confronted shipping delays, manufacturing woes, and the general chaos brought about by the coronavirus pandemic.
Against this frantic backdrop, however, we succeeded in safely moving the client cross-country into their new and beautifully furnished, home, with time to settle in before welcoming their new son.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
As everyone knows, the pandemic created a set of obstacles across all industries that had not been seen before in our lifetimes. We had to establish and maintain health and safety protocols; the global shipping network experienced duress, creating cascades of delays in receipt of merchandise from overseas that we have come to rely upon in our business. It was paramount for my clients that their houses be furnished upon arrival.
Some accent pieces could wait (and in fact, we are still waiting for some, over two years later!), but the anchor pieces in all of the rooms needed to be in place and usable. This challenge required us to resort to custom-making pieces locally in Los Angeles on a very tight timeframe so that they could be put on the moving truck from LA to Nashville. We also limited our search for certain pieces to in-stock or locally available items.
In some ways, the pandemic made the project easier at the outset because we were not engaging with a huge universe of products — we narrowed the scope of vendors and executed decisions very quickly. One miraculous upside of the entire project is that my childhood best friend lives in Nashville, relatively close to the project location. Every time I came to town I got to stay with her and her family.
This was immensely more fun than shacking up in a hotel during COVID!
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I started my interior design firm almost a decade ago, and I jumped in headfirst without any real concept of what it would mean to run a company. In my case, ignorance was certainly bliss! I feel so fortunate to be passionate about what I do because it means that I meet every hardship and challenge with the underlying attitude that it is a learning experience, an opportunity to be of service, and a step on the ladder to more knowledge, more expertise, more resilience, and more efficiency.
My favorite part of the job is working with people. I develop strong connections with my clients and my vendors and do my best to show up to work with love and a spirit of giving. I take each day as it comes, I put my effort into meeting the needs of the day with a cheerful attitude, and I have faith that the results will meet or exceed client expectations.
I feel strongly that if the client/designer relationship is not warm and trusting if it is at all adversarial or doubting, that less pleasurable experience will translate into a less successful result. I always say that an honest interior is the best interior, and I do take pride in my ability to help my clients articulate their personal identities, individual and combined, into an actual physical backdrop against which they can more safely and happily live their lives.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
I always look forward to visiting Nashville, because the beautiful landscape, welcoming people, and delicious food remind me of my home state next door, Kentucky. I try to stop by the Frist Art Museum every time I am in town.
While I prefer cornbread to biscuits generally, there is definitely a shortage of biscuits in Los Angeles so I’m happy to indulge when I’m in town, especially at The Loveless Cafe. I love shopping in downtown Franklin and I routinely overspend at Oak Hall in Green Hills.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.lindsaypenningtoninc.com
- Instagram: @lindsaypennington
Image Credits
Suzy Thompson Photography
