Life & Work with Kate Schanz

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kate Schanz.

Hi Kate, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I hung wallpaper for the first time in December of 2018. My husband and I put up one strip of peel & stick wallpaper, I may have cried about how hard and frustrating it was, we went to waffle house for dinner, and then the one strip hung by itself on our living room wall for about 3 weeks. I ended up finishing it and went on to hang wallpaper in our son’s nursery because I absolutely loved what it did for the room. Fast forward to a new house with more walls and my maximalist décor style took over. At least seven areas of our house have wallpaper.

After quitting my corporate job in June of this summer, and spending all day applying for a new job with no luck, I needed to figure something out. I’d hung wallpaper for a couple of friends here and there and had never given the idea of it being a lively hood thought until I was wallpapering a friend’s office and she suggested it as a viable option.

Kate Schanz- Installation & Interiors was born a couple of weeks later and I’m proud to be growing this fun business rather quickly.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
While the roads haven’t been completely smooth, I feel grateful that the woes have been mild. I mistakenly thought I could take on a project I wasn’t prepared for at the very beginning of my journey, but learned so so much from it. Long story short, I tried to install wallpaper on a CEILING all by myself… I learned a lesson on gravity that day but also what it means to persevere.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
People are equally shocked and confused when I tell them that I hang wallpaper full-time. I wouldn’t say I’m ever insulted because it’s more of a misunderstanding (wallpaper has made a huge comeback in the interior design world), but it can definitely give me a bit of “imposter syndrome”. In my head I get this dialogue like “wait, yes, this is my job…” “this is how I make a living”, etc.

All of that to say- in an emotional sense, my work and business often takes on a deeper meaning than just hanging wallpaper because it has defined a new me. In a physical sense, I not only hang wallpaper almost every day, but I am scheduling clients, calculating amounts of paper to order, creating content for instagram, answering questions and inquiries, and much more. It’s been interesting to find balance.

In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
Because I am super fresh to the massive world that is the interior design industry, I have no idea what to expect in 5-10 years. I frequently google questions like “how long do interior design trends last” and so on and so forth. My hope is that this industry swallows me up and I will live in it forever, but I often wonder if I’ll ever need to shift and learn how to paint, or remove wallpaper. My goal is that in a year from now, I’ll have an idea of what this career should look like for me. For now, though, I’m going to hang wallpaper every chance I get.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @KSinstallationandinteriors