Tim Celeski crafts fine wood outdoor furniture to last

A MASTER outdoor-furniture craftsman has set up shop down a dirt road in the tiny town of Indianola on the Kitsap Peninsula. He sells his furniture all over the country, even to a big Hollywood movie, but so far it graces very few gardens around here.

Tim Celeski is out to prove that outdoor furniture can be every bit as comfortable and beautiful as indoor furniture. Startled to see plastic Adirondacks dotting the terrace of Skamania Lodge along the Columbia River Gorge, Celeski resolved to design durable, weather-resistant alternatives. "You see that beautiful lodge architecture and then go outside and see plastic Adirondacks . . . It's just so wrong," he explains.

The design process was a long one, not unlike the route Celeski took to becoming a woodworker. He went to school to be an architect, came out a designer, studied music and worked as a jazz and studio musician. He keeps bees and chose his property in Indianola in part because of its broadband. Celeski is a tech geek, with all the latest Mac gear, and maintains several Web pages, including www.celeski.com.

In the past couple of years, spurred on by the thought of those plastic chairs, he's concentrated on crafting garden furniture. For Celeski, his wife and two cats, this meant a move from West Seattle and a single-car-garage workshop to three acres of forested property in Indianola, with a spacious studio.

The furniture Celeski crafts, piece by laborious piece, is so convincingly Craftsman that it has been bought up for the famous Greene and Greene houses in Pasadena, Calif. And lately his work has even gone Hollywood. Celeski built custom furniture to add ambience to the Harrison Ford movie "Extraordinary Measures."

But most of his clients are passionate gardeners in search of special furniture for their outdoor spaces. Celeski builds to suit. His work is characterized by authentically historic designs, faultless craftsmanship and wood so smooth you want to pet it. But what makes these lovely pieces as tough as the plastic Adirondacks that motivated them?

"I'm a belt-and-suspender guy when it comes to joinery," explains Celeski. "I over-engineer everything." He uses dovetail or mortis and tenon joints to hold structural pieces together, which makes the furniture much stronger than if it was assembled with metal fasteners. The dining tables are self-leveling, no matchbooks needed under the legs on uneven outdoor surfaces.

Surprisingly, Celeski uses not a shred of cedar. The pieces are built mostly of mahogany, with jarrah wood from Western Australia for accent and contrast. The mahogany's grain is straight, it doesn't contract or expand very much, and it darkens over time (Celeski describes it as "suntanning"). It's easy to care for; Celeski advises washing the wood with kitchen soap and a soft brush to get any dirt out of the grain. Then apply a coat of UV-blocking oil, like Brazilian rosewood oil, to protect the wood from the sun. I've always thought our persistent rainfall was what warped and wore wood furniture, but it turns out, as with our skin, sun is the culprit.

Celeski has named his furniture lines after neighborhoods such as Alki (a 1930s modern style) and Wallingford (Craftsman/Stickley look).

Despite the Seattle neighborhood names, Celeski sells 80 percent of his work in other parts of the country. Why? In sunny California, outdoor furniture is used year-round, so perhaps people are willing to pay for custom pieces. It's not inexpensive to make furniture that holds up outdoors for years: the Adirondacks run from $650 to $950, benches cost from $500 up to $4,000 for an 8-foot-long one so heavy and intricate it takes two people to assemble it.

Celeski is at work on new, more contemporary designs. Stay tuned for a Midcentury modern line with the comfort of an Eames chair. And inspired by the garden of his neighbor, plantsman Dan Hinkley, Celeski is designing benches, tables and chairs that are Northwest contemporary.

Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer and author of "The New Low-Maintenance Garden." Check out her blog at www.valeaston.com.