Early American Restoration

Early American Restoration is a Framingham firm specializing in historic preservation and restoration — window and door restoration, custom carpentry, and whole-building preservation — alongside general construction and remodeling. Owner Duane Houghton is a Navy Seabees veteran with a Master's degree in Historic Preservation from Roger Williams University and previously worked as a Preservation Manager at Historic New England; the company describes over 30 years of construction experience and identifies itself as a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business. It's been operating since 2016 (formerly under the name Duane D. Houghton LLC) and holds an A+ Better Business Bureau rating. The written record is thin — one review on file, from 2021 — but it's a telling one for a small operation: the reviewer needed several holes drilled with a drill press, a modest job, and said Duane made time for it and treated the project as though it mattered as much as a larger one, enough to say they'd recommend him to others. The company's Houzz portfolio shows 10 posted projects — historic restorations, window replacements, home extensions, and custom staircases among them — though that profile is currently marked suspended, which is worth asking about directly. With just one written review on file, there isn't much volume to judge consistency at scale, but the credentials and focus are unusually specific: for a historic home or a restoration project that calls for that kind of preservation background, this looks like a strong fit — ask to see recent restoration work given how limited the online review history is.