A little bit about us
Hello! Chris and Dash here. We are the owners of TopShelf Wood Company and we wanted to share our story with you!
To tell you about ourselves, we met in college in 2010 and have been together ever since, tying the knot in 2017! For our honeymoon, we decided to take our first trip out of the country together, traveling to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic and we haven’t looked back. Since that first trip, we've traveled to many beautiful countries in our years together, including Barbados, Belize, Austria, Aruba, Costa Rica, Switzerland, Germany and a few others. As you may be able to tell by now, traveling is a passion of ours. We love experiencing the different cultures, different cuisines, and taking in the majestic scenery this world has to offer!
The story of topshelf
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Beauty in diversity
Just as the aforementioned differs country to country, so does their forestry and wood species produced. According to onetreeplanted.org, there are over 60,000 tree species throughout the world, and we believe there are many more that have not even been discovered yet. For those of you who are unaware, different wood species come with differing features such colors, grain patterns, and hardness to name a few. The result is an ever changing variation in aesthetics and functionality to suit a wide variety of personal preferences and needs.
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Hobby and passion
Combining our passion for traveling, with Chris's passion for woodwork, TopShelf Wood Company was born. Chris started his woodworking journey in high school, where it remained a hobby throughout his undergraduate and graduate coursework. After completing his academics and settling into his job in the medical field, Chris decided to start taking on custom commissions during his free time, forming TopShelf WoodWorks in 2019. Always seeking the most aesthetically pleasing materials, Chris grew a passion for working with not only popular domestic species, but also the more rare exotic species that are not as easily accessible in the states.
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going for it
In 2021 we moved into our new home and decided that we wanted to personally craft our own furniture from wood that we obtained from our next travel destination, the beautiful country of Costa Rica. Initially we were searching for a place to hand pick a single slab to bring home for our dining table, but found this a more difficult task than we had imagined, and instead came across an opportunity to purchase a bulk load of Costa Rican exotic wood. After a lot of discussion, we decided that this was the direction we wanted to take the company. We changed the name from TopShelf WoodWorks to TopShelf Wood Company and decided that we would not only continue to create, with our love of travel reflected in the materials we use, but also provide the opportunity for other makers to use these amazing materials by redistributing them in our local community.
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Looking towards the future
As our company is in its infancy, we currently are only offering various species of wood from Costa Rica. However, as we continue to grow, we look forward to building more relationships with sawmills, and redistributing various species from all over the globe, as we pursue our passion of traveling the world. Although we love living in the moment, we can’t wait to see where this journey takes us next!
We hope you have enjoyed learning about our journey! TopShelf Wood Company was born with the desire to combine our two passions into a business where we can create art and share our love of traveling through our raw and finished products. Do you have a favorite vacation spot? We are always looking for our next adventure and would love to hear about your travel experiences to see if they would be a potential destination for us. Feel free to shoot us an email at topshelfwoodco@gmail.com to tell us about your experiences and recommendations!