Just as each furnishing is crafted from materials reimagined, repurposed, and reclaimed, in the process of creation, each craftsman’s life is reimagined, repurposed, and redeemed.
Vantz Live Edge Furniture company was born out of a mission to provide men in recovery from addiction with outlets for creativity, employment experience, career training, and safe, supportive, affordable housing within the nation’s first authentic recovery neighborhood.
Kyle and Andi
In a revolutionary response to the devastation of a national opioid addiction epidemic, Vantz Furniture is one of a variety of small businesses sponsored by the Riverbank House recovery community in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire. These small businesses allow men to rebuild lives of dignity and purpose through employment, and all business proceeds are then invested back into the recovery neighborhood in the form of scholarships that keep the cost of long-term residency affordable. From a small, informal campus woodshop, Vantz has grown into a 4,000 square foot furniture showroom and production facility within walking distance of the Riverbank House recovery campus.
When the neighborhood’s Karma Café opened to the public in May of 2017, the restaurant was furnished with live edge tables and rustic booths created by two neighborhood residents, Kyle and Andi, and from that first project, with mentoring by members of the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen, Vantz Furniture was launched. Like all Vantz craftsmen, both Kyle and Andi have found live edge furniture construction to be ideally suited to their new lives in recovery.
As a result of the Covid-19 Pandemic Vantz Furniture was closed for a time. It has since changed ownership and is now owned and operated by Kyle. He continues the tradition of fine craftsmanship and giving back to the community.
Before his life was derailed by drugs, Kyle trained as a custom boat builder on the coast of Maine. After joining the Riverbank House community in 2016, he found a direct connection between the art of live edge furniture design and his new identity as a man in recovery. “I’m constantly growing as an artist because I have to work with the materials at hand — the slab of wood that comes from a particular tree. It’s a learn-as- I-go process that is peaceful and creative and all about recovery. It’s an amazing process to work with — rather than against — the grain, which is just like my experience in recovery. I work with the raw material I have until something beautiful and stable and warm and functional emerges.”
In the summer of 2020 Vantz Live Edge Furniture started it's Apprentice Program. This program takes people in early recovery and works with them on both their recovery and learning the craft. See more on the Apprentice Program Page
A portion of all profits go to our Recovery Grant Program, which finances treatment for men who cannot afford it.
Andi
Zack and Kyle
Our Workshop
Vantz Live Edge Furniture is all about salvaged lumber and salvaged lives. It’s a partnership that represents repurposing and beautifying the fallen material at hand. It’s about bringing warmth and stability into the home, office, business, or garden.
