About Us

Steve Booth Builders maintains a small but skilled carpentry crew, particularly well suited for restoration and renovations to older homes, or wherever regard for architectural details is a priority.

With our own cabinet shop, we can match old moldings and woodwork, or sometimes even obtain appropriate salvaged materials to give our new work the right look in your older home. A quick look through our portfolio shows many examples of these special details that can give our work a little extra value in your home.

Our commitment to energy efficiency means we can also incorporate better insulation and improvements to window and door efficiency, with minimum compromise to historical integrity.

One advantage to having worked in the same area for so long is that we have built very strong working relationships with a wide variety of reliable subcontractors, design professionals and specialized vendors. These invaluable teammates play a huge role in making our jobs run smoothly, and obtaining good quality and performance in all different facets of each project -- from mechanicals to specialized materials to finishes.

A little about my own background...

My father was a contractor, so as a child I grew up around the sights and sounds of a family owned small construction business. He ran Community Builders for nearly forty years, during the last twenty of which he gained a national reputation for solar design and pioneering energy efficiency. During that time he published two books, and twice received NH Governor's honors for his energy innovations.

Naturally, I did work for him, at first summers and part-time, but also full-time for nearly ten years after I graduated from college. It was mainly during those solar years that I grew to nearly run the day-to-day side of his building business, while he focused on design innovations.

Steve Booth

But my real love was fine woodwork and old houses, which is why I made the choice in 1986 to step out into my own business, Steve Booth Builders. I had gained an interest in old ways of working with wood from the traditional Yankee carpenters that worked for my father, so I got started early collecting antique tools and studying old house construction. In the 1970's I got some significant education in architectural history as part of my college studies at UNH, where I connected through a sympathetic architecture professor with Dr. James Garvin, now the State of NH Architectural Historian, but at that time employed at Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth. He helped guide me in an extended undergraduate independent study of New England architectural history.

I got lucky and married a terrific kitchen designer in 1994, and with a little help from me she launched her own business, Vintage Kitchens in 1995. As Vintage Kitchens has grown, more of Steve Booth Builders recent work has focused on the special challenges of incorporating new kitchens into older homes.