KATHRYN WAGNER- CO-FOUNDER, DYI INC.

Kathy Wagner was born in a small town, Claxton, just outside of Savannah, Georgia. Being a Southern woman, she inherited an innate sense of style and aesthetics. During her tenure with her first career with Eastern Airlines Kathy continued to develop her interest in fashion and design.

She eventually purchased and operated an interior fabric shop, Atlanta Home Fabrics, in Marietta, Georgia. With Kathy's natural flair for design, she soon opened a design studio from the same premises. Kathy eventually relocated the design side of the business to Kansas City. During the building of a new home in Leawood, Kathy met Melody Davidson, a prominent local interior designer. The two hit it off immediately, and before they knew it, the partnership was born. They created a separate design team from Melody's business and DYI was launched.

In 1995, while Melody had always worked with 1/4" scale when choosing furniture size and placement, Kathy came up with the idea of making "life size furniture templates".  Melody had the expertise for the l/4" scale method and the patience to deal with hours of measuring and detail work. They realized, however, that not everyone had this skill. They both decided producing room "kits" of standard pre-sized furniture templates ("patterns" so to speak) would eliminate time, costly mistakes, and greatly SIMPLIFY the entire ORDEAL of buying the right size furniture and its placement in that particular room.

The business part of copyrighting, the patent process and trade-marking have all been professionally administered, and DYI, Inc., Life Size Furniture Templates, is now a growing concern. The popular kits are manufactured and distributed from Kansas City.