Behind the dust
From a Grand Rapids garage to furniture in 49 states.
Lumber2Love started with two people building tables after work — dinner with the kids, then back out to the garage until the early hours.
It is now a custom furniture shop in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where every piece is still built by hand, one at a time, by people whose names you can learn.
How it happened
Eight years, one board at a time
Nights and weekends, in a two-car garage
Ryan was working in higher education and coaching college athletics. Amanda was running everything else. The building happened after hours — custom pieces for friends, then friends of friends, then people none of us had met.
Nothing about it was a plan. It was a hobby that refused to stay a hobby.
Ryan quit the day job
He traded a career in higher education and college coaching for sawdust and no guaranteed paycheck. People told him it was a bad idea. It was a bad idea, right up until it wasn't.
The orders kept coming and the garage stopped being big enough.
The part nobody sees
Amanda joined full time during the pandemic and changed how the whole thing ran. Every message answered, every order tracked, every customer treated like the order mattered — because at this size, every order does.
Most of what people say they love about working with us is her doing, not the woodworking.
A working shop in Grand Rapids, Michigan
Twenty-seven craftspeople and drivers. Milling, joinery, finishing, upholstery and delivery all under one roof, with nothing outsourced and nothing imported.
Our work is in homes, restaurants, hotels, boutiques, showrooms and boardrooms across 49 states. We are still coming for you, Hawaii.
What we refuse to change
Every table is still built to order. There is no warehouse of finished pieces waiting for someone to buy them, because a table built for an eleven-foot dining room is the wrong table for a nine-foot one.
Every piece is still solid American hardwood, joined with mortise and tenon rather than screws and cam locks. The one place we use veneer is a starburst or compass top — a radial pattern cannot be cut from solid boards without tearing itself apart as the wood moves, so those get a premium hardwood veneer over a solid core. We say so on every product that offers it.
You talk to the people who build it
There is no account manager layer. When you send a custom request, someone from the shop reads it and answers it.
Why Michigan matters
Grand Rapids has been a furniture town for a hundred and fifty years. The skill is here because it never left — there are people on our floor who learned joinery from someone who learned it in the old West Michigan factories.
Building here costs more than importing. It also means we can walk over and look at a board before it becomes your table, catch a problem before it ships, and fix something ourselves rather than filing a claim with a supplier on another continent.
Made to be repaired
Solid wood can be sanded back and refinished decades from now. That is the whole point. Care and maintenance is a page on this site because we expect these pieces to need it in thirty years, not to be replaced.
The people
Twenty-seven of us, and every piece touches most of them
Millers, joiners, finishers, upholsterers, drivers and the two people who still answer the phone. We are dedicated to keeping this craft alive in a market that mostly stopped teaching it — which means a fun, safe place to work and real training for the next generation.
Oh, and building the absolute best furniture. Period.
Where the work ends up
Homes, dining rooms and boardrooms
Residential
Dining tables built to the room
Round, rectangular, expandable and pedestal, from 42 inches to twelve feet, in the species and finish you choose.
Commercial
Restaurants, hotels and offices
Contract-grade tables, banquettes, conference tables with integrated power, credenzas and commercial seating. COM accepted.
The proof
See it in real rooms
Photographs of finished pieces in the homes and businesses they were built for, not staged in a studio.
Come see it for yourself
The shop is open, by appointment.
2882 Northridge Dr NW, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Monday to Friday, 9am to 3pm. Come look at the wood, watch something get built, and talk through what you have in mind.