Supervisor and Carpenter
“I knew I was going to be a carpenter before I was eight years old,” says Joe Watson, a supervisor who has been with Abrahamse & Company since 1987. He remembers his father catching him driving nails through the cracks in the porch floor at their Dickinson County, Virginia farmhouse when he was too small to drive a nail through the boards. When Joe started out as a laborer over fifty years ago, he earned a dollar an hour. He later became a supervisor of the construction of multi-million dollar residential and commercial projects. Currently, he’s mentoring our younger carpenters, as such expertise is becoming a lost art.
“Custom work is always so interesting because each job is different,” Joe says. He also enjoys meeting customer needs, remembering one client in particular: “They had collected artifacts from all over the world, so we built that house around their prized possessions.” But he knows that his skills will only go so far. “I can build a house however you want me to,” he promises, “but only the owner can make it a home.”
Talking about working at Abrahamse & Company, Joe smiles, “You can’t find a better group of people to work with. Problems get resolved in a hurry, and I feel free to express my opinions.”
After work, Joe plays golf, fishes, and spends time with his grandchildren whenever he can.