Our lives are based around wood.

We heat our home and shop with wood. We harvest maple sweetwater from our family sugarbush each Spring and boil it down into syrup over a wood fire. We hike and play with our children in the forests around our home. And, yes, we make our living designing and crafting beautiful wood products for your home.

I've always loved wood and wood work. Both of my grandfathers were woodworkers and, as a child, I skipped Saturday morning cartoons in favor of the woodworking shows on PBS (here's to you, Norm Abrams and Roy Underhill!).

Early in my adult life, I became a carpenter and specialized in finish carpentry and trim, and it was glorious! But, then I shifted gears. Through some strange and wonderful moments of luck, I became a photographer. A commercial pilot. A project manager and training specialist. A corporate executive. And a Change Management consultant.

I'll always be grateful for those opportunities and career paths. I learned a lot and met wonderful people, but, in the midst of my professional successes, I felt like a failure. I longed for an existence that was simpler. I ached to create something tangible and useful each day. I wanted to do something with a meaningful and direct impact for my customers and clients.

In 2010, we bought an old one-room schoolhouse and moved our young family back to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. In 2013, we built a woodshop on the back of our property and I left corporate America. Since then, we've been refining our products and processes, creating a business that we can be proud of, both as owners and parents.

We strive for exceptional design and craftsmanship. Our products are all carefully considered, intentionally crafted, and sustainably sourced and produced. We believe in designs that speak for themselves: the best sales pitch is to simply hand one of our products to a customer, no words required. The superbly smooth finish, the edge profile that's just-so, the radiance of the hand-selected wood . . . those elements say all that needs to be said.

We favor simplicity in design; complexity is often the result of shortcomings in function or aesthetics. Exceptional design marries simplicity, beauty, and functionality without the clutter of excess.

Our greatest hope is that our designs ground our clients, connecting them to their daily existence. Life is for living, even in the monotonous, repetitive moments. We want to bring joy and intentionality into the simple act of slicing a carrot on an exquisite Birdseye maple cutting board or stiring a soup with an exceptional kitchen paddle.

Thank you for stopping by and for, hopefully, bringing THIRD COAST WOODWORK into your home. We look forward to being a part of your story!

Jeremy Vore
Chief Maker of Things and Creator of Sawdust