| Woodworking Home Page | See Furniture | Plesums Home Page |
Charlie can trace his woodworking projects back over 50 years. "I would sneak to the basement to use my father's tools. (As a parent, I now realize that sneak is the wrong word. My father must have known that I was using his tools.)" In fourth or fifth grade Charlie won a prize for a wooden stool he made. In 7th grade he turned his first lamp, to match the bed posts of his bed. Over the years, he built countless kitchen and bathroom cabinets, bookcases, and other "cabinet" projects, and remodeled several houses.
Gradually he switched from just cabinets to building fine furniture. As others saw his work, he was commissioned to build furniture for more than family and friends. Finally in early 2005 he switched from full-time computer-consulting and part-time woodworking, to full-time woodworking and part-time consulting. Some call it retirement. Others call it pursuing a passion.
Jenny has been married to Charlie for over 35 years, so has endured many of the bigger projects. Actually her participation was more "help with" rather than just "hold this." She took up woodworking as a hobby, and is quite good, although she still describes herself as the apprentice. (Her interest in woodworking faded a bit when she got a new computerized sewing machine, but she hasn't completely left the wood shop.) Obviously all those years of working together, and the countless New Yankee Workshop and Woodworks TV shows, and the issues of Fine Woodworking and other publications, have had an impact.
Many of our early furniture projects were for family or friends, but other people admired our work, and have asked us to build furniture for them. We enjoyed the variety and challenge of fulfilling other people's dreams. Jenny still has a regular full-time job, but Charlie is doing woodworking "most" of the time.
We would be happy to meet with you any time to establish your requirements. You may work with us day, nights, or weekends. You will always have our personal attention, not a receptionist. Our backlog (before we could start a new project) has been staying at about six weeks since shortly after Charlie started woodworking "full time." When you are ready to commit to the project, we will commit to a schedule, based on our backlog at that moment.
Our preference is building heirloom-quality furniture from solid hardwoods or veneers. Of course "heirloom quality" and "entertainment center" or "built in bookcase" don't make sense together - we can also work with furniture grade plywood when appropriate, using comparable high quality hand construction techniques. We are not interested in building economy furniture - factories can mass-produce better items with man-made materials, cheaper than we can. See the frequently asked questions for more on furniture grades and the choices you have. To give you an idea of the potential cost, this web site shows the price we would charge with today's material costs to reproduce previous projects.
We don't have a showroom. Most of our recent work has been delivered to others, so we don't even have that much to show you at our home (you know the story of shoes for the cobbler's children). But we do love to talk about woodworking and show what we have and our workshop. If you would like to visit, let us know by telephone (512-349-0740) or e-mail to Charlie@Plesums.com. Click here for driving directions to our home.
Back to the woodworking page at www.plesums.com/wood
Back to the home page at www.plesums.com
Send e-mail comments to Charlie@Plesums.com
©2005 by Charles A. Plesums, Austin, Texas USA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.