DESIGN: True Grit

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

- JARED MISNER

FOR SOMEONE WHO spends her life getting dirty, Katie Schindler’s nails are surprisingly flawless. 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 five-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 finishing 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.