Design

DESIGN True Grit

Katie Schindler creates custom finishes for some of the city’s biggest players

BY JARED MISNER

FOR SOMEONE WHO spends her life getting dirty, Katie Schindler’s nails are surprisingly awless. They’re painted in OPI’s Cloud White, and she’s very glad you noticed.

Then again, she spends her days in a paint shop; taking pride in her own 10 tiny palettes isn’t all too shocking. As she stands in her studio, all ve-feet-and-three-quarters-of-an-inch of her, fanning out her cloud-colored nails, it’s hard to picture her commanding job sites dominated by burly, hard hat-wearing men. But that’s exactly what she does.

Schindler, 37, owns and runs the custom nishing company Fine Grit out of a cavernous blue warehouse on the northern fringes of NoDa. This is where Schindler will pointedly remind you in her Tennessee twang that she gets her jobs—which have included commercial projects at The Waterman, Resident Culture Brewing, and The Golden Carrot—because of her talent, not her gender.

Not that the role is easy for a woman. Misogyny on a construction or repair site is o en implied rather than overt, she says. “I have had to earn my respect. So, I walk in and I’m like, ‘No, this is not how we do it.’ And they’re like, ‘Who are you?’ And I’m like, ‘Who are you, because you’re on my job site!’”

Katie Schindler (above) designed, built, and finished the display cases at The Golden Carrot in Atherton Mill (top right).

That attitude endears her to some of her clients.

“I was jazzed that I was getting to work with such a badass chick,” says Nicole Corriher, owner of The Golden Carrot in Atherton Mill. She hired Schindler to design, build, and nish her display cases last year a er she moved her upscale jewelry store from New Jersey to Charlotte. “I loved the fact that Katie was so willing to explore ideas that were out of the box,” she says. “She’s thirsty for creativity.”

Custom nishing is a labor-intensive, detail-oriented method of spraying lacquer paint on a surface (o en cabinets, countertops, or other large wooden surfaces) to “ nish” it or, as Schindler would say, perfect it.

In addition to the smooth, modern, slim-legged jewelry display cases at The Golden Carrot, her nishing resume includes the rustic, nautical woodwork at The Waterman that makes diners in the middle of Charlotte feel like they’re at a seafood shack on the coast. When the team at Undercurrent Co ee designed the Plaza Midwood location, it hired Schindler to create the custom tabletops and shelving units to complement the cool tones and extensive tile work in the cafe.

Schindler’s thirst for creativity and love of paint began in her childhood bedroom in East Tennessee. Like many children, she wanted to paint her walls—but in a custom color. “I liked taking something and something else and making them into something that I wanted to see,” she

says. So she combined red, yellow, and purple to create her first custom color. A er college, she shopped thrift stores for old pieces of cheap furniture, reinvigorated them with paint, and resold them at ea markets.

Schindler later worked as a sales representative for Axalta, the coatings company she still relies on for lacquer. Clients and industry types began to ask her why she was selling paint instead of working with it. One day, a customer o ered to sell her the full-service paint shop he planned to shut down. Three days later, the NoDa warehouse was hers, and she was her own boss. “I had no LLC, no plan on, like, how to start a business, no idea,” she says. “That was ve years ago.”

In her rst year, she managed with just herself and some part-time workers. A client hired her to re nish cabinets in 15 rooms of his home, which she completed within one month. “I don’t know how I did it,” she says with a laugh.

But she still does.

(Above) Fine Grit finished the custom shelving and cabinetry at Selenite Beauty in South End. Schindler finished the nautical woodwork at The Waterman (right) and refinished the wood cabinets and range hood for a recent kitchen renovation (bottom right).

COURTESY JARED MISNER is a writer for this magazine. His work has also appeared in Our State, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Knot and Logo.