Hey there, we’re Jamison & Jamie.

How it started

One overpriced patio chair changed everything.

It was 2013. We’d just added a screened porch onto our place in Savannah, and went looking for furniture to fill it. Everything we liked was either ridiculously expensive or boring as drywall — usually both.

“I could build it?” I said. Jamie rolled her eyes from the other room. Fair. I’d never built any furniture in my life.

I found an Ana-White plan for a Belvedere lounge chair, followed it line by line, and ended up with something that looked like it walked out of a Restoration Hardware catalog. We were both surprised.

“Have a plan, follow the plan.”

Going all in

From aerospace engineer to full-time builder.

I grew up in Pocomoke City on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. After high school I went to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University for an aerospace engineering degree, and spent the next decade as a Flight Test Mechanical Design Engineer at Gulfstream. CAD modeling, tolerance stacks, the works.

Rogue Engineer started as nights-and-weekends — one chair, then a coffee table, then a website to share the plans. By 2016 it had grown enough that I left Gulfstream to do this full-time.

The engineering background turned out to be the secret weapon. Every plan we publish gets modeled in 3D first, with cut lists, and step-by-step diagrams — the same way I used to design aircraft components, just for furniture you can build in your garage.

Meet Jamie

The reason things look good.

Jamie is the design half of Rogue Engineer. She’s the one deciding what we build, where it goes, what color it gets, and how it ends up looking when the dust clears. Most of the spaces you see on the channel started as a sketch or a mood board on her computer.

She runs the design and planning — layouts, finishes, materials, the way a built-in actually fits a room instead of fighting with it. And she handles the painting and finishing on most builds: stains, paint, distressing, the final 10% that turns lumber into furniture.

She’s also the one I trust to tell me a build looks wrong. If a piece doesn’t earn its spot in the room, it gets canned. That standard is hers because I trust her opinion.

“Jamie has the vision. I reverse engineer it. We make it a reality.”

Home base

Chelsea, Michigan — with a shop and two kids.

We left Savannah for Chelsea, Michigan, where most of our builds happen now. Our two kids are usually somewhere in the background of the operation — helping when they want, asking what’s for dinner the rest of the time.

The shop, the camera, the plans, the website — it’s all run from here. Family business in the most literal sense.