Northwoods Builders & Kitchens

We just finished our second project with Northwoods Builders and once again we were very pleased. For this project they gutted the 2nd and 3rd floors of our home, added dormers and a bathroom, upgraded electrical and helped us find HVAC that would work with our Mass Save goals. We dealt with some delays due to Cambridge zoning board's overall strictness on certain guidelines, but Clint and John kept our project on schedule and on budget (which is really what I care about more than anything). Their work is excellent and they were always responsive to our concerns and changing needs throughout the project.

Engaging John Selinger, John Rodriguez and their team at Northwoods was the best decision we made in our large renovation project in Cambridge! Our project was quite extensive, involving a new bathroom, new kitchen, reframing and updates and finishings to every part of our very old house. While they weren’t the cheapest bid, I cannot imagine higher value. John and his team are honest, extremely communicative, well organized and excellent craftsmen who care about their work. They adapted to every situation that came about seamlessly, and finished the project ahead of time. We will definitely hire them for our next project and are recommending them to close friends. Don’t look further…

Clint and the team are just fantastic. We did a gut renovation and addition with them in Arlington and we could not be happier with the result. The whole team takes pride in their work and John and Clint were reliable partners in a large and complex project. Their attention to detail and judgement are outstanding. And they worked hard to make a large project work for the neighborhood - they handled neighbors and the town with great care. We would recommend them without any hesitation.

I am an interior designer that specialize in residential home remodels. I have worked with John and Clint of Northwoods Builders, LLC for about 12 years. John and Clint, are great to work with. They are professional, honest, respectful of my ideas and reliable. Their attention to detail makes it easy to work with. Their crew are incredible to work with. They are always attentive, clean and do an amazing finishing work. All their sub-contractors are respectful and reliable. They are always on time to all meetings and they are at the job site when they are scheduled to work. I recommend Northwoods Builders, LLC for all your home renovations.

Northwoods Builders and Clint Keeney (owner) have done 2 large projects for me with the second one ending in 2023, and both were done very well. The second project was a full gut/remodel including addition of new square footage, new roof, new interior walls, new heat pumps/ducts, new kitchen, new deck, installation of three long-span engineered beams to accommodate my open design, hardwood floor installation, painting all around, new windows, new skylights, new doors (interior and exterior), on-demand water heater, and electrical fixture, panel & wiring work. I was and am very happy with Clint’s responsiveness to my questions, concerns, and scope changes. He gave me fair pricing. Important! Punch list items were addressed quickly. His crew is excellent and they are all committed to high quality. Northwoods partnered well with my architect as well the project engineer for the engineered beam and support wall analysis. Also moved through the town permitting and inspection process cleanly and easily. As a former furnituremaker, I paid very close attention to all the details of the work, and his quality and the subcontractor quality was very good. I’m a happy customer and plan to work with Northwoods again. Thanks Clint Keeney & Crew!!

In 2019, we enlisted the services of Northwoods Builders to undertake the renovation of our 1867 stick-style Victorian residence in Weston, MA. Our decision to choose Clint and his team came highly recommended by our broker, and it was a critical project, given the age of our home and the damage it had sustained over the years due to neglect from previous owners. Facing the challenge of living in the house during the renovation, we needed a contractor who could not only handle the complexities of the project, but also provide a high level of skill, organization and courtesy. We completely gutted some areas of the back of the house and conducted some serious structural work, which included installing a 2,000 lb steel support beam. We were very pleased with Northwoods, and would certainly work with them again in the future.

I had an exceptional experience working with Northwoods Builders. It began with the renovation of two bathrooms and turned into a total gut renovation of our Boston condo. The entire crew was professional and easy to work with and most importantly did beautiful, high quality work.

I highly recommend Northwoods and look forward to working with them again should the need arise.

Clint has done a few projects for us, including the renovation of our home (kitchen, adding 2 bathrooms, and basement). Clint and his team are honest, hardworking, and pay close attention to detail. They were able to match and replicate intricate columns, as well as gumwood to keep historic character of our house. Have referred him to many friends, and have worked with him on other family projects including a renovation in NH and Concord. Highly recommended!

I am an architect, and have been lucky to have several projects I designed built by Northwoods. I have worked with Clint and his team on houses around the Boston area, and I'm looking forward to doing more together. I have always been impressed by their dedication, knowledge, organization, and creativity.

We have lived in our Victorian home since 1998 and have been renovating it ever since. Our last big project was a down to the studs renovation of a large family bathroom. We worked with Clint and with Jeff Swanson of Charles Street Design. When the project was done, I found myself wishing that I'd found both of them years ago! Clint is a pleasure to work with, as are all of his subcontractors. The only delays we had were due to Covid and supply chain issues and were not at all Clint's fault. Since my husband and I are not at all handy, we need to work with contractors who are very knowledgeable and who will take the time to explain the how's and why's to us so we can make good decisions. I don't regret one aspect of our bathroom project and Clint gets a large part of the credit for that. We also found that his pricing is very fair and he delivered the project on budget. We recommend him without reservation!

We have worked with the Northwoods Builders team on several large-scale projects from home additions to kitchen and bath renovations. The experience has always been high-quality work and a very professional experience. We're a residential architecture and interiors firm.

We are always careful when recommending a partner for our projects. We're never hesitant about bringing in Northwoods Builders for our projects. The team is diligent, careful and very attentive to the construction documents and specifications provided. And, if they ever have a question - they call promptly. We've always found that our clients loved working with Clint and his team. The communication and collaboration that every project requires to be successful was always at a highly professional level.

A renovation of any level requires many hands, many heads and an unbelievable amount of detail to come to a close with success. The Northwoods Builders & Kitchens team excels and making clients happy. We're about to begin another project at the moment for a new house that one of our previous clients moved into. That says a lot when the homeowner wants the same team again.

Northwoods Builders completed a gut renovation of our kitchen in Brookline in 2019, as well as handled finishing touches throughout our entire home prior to our moving in. Clint and his team were wonderful to work with, his pricing is competitive, the work was excellent and his team finished on time and at budget. We had very difficult neighbors in a two-family home (this is putting is mildly) and Clint and his team managed their expectations and took a lot of stress off of our family. We are about to embark on a huge home renovation with Clint in Cambridge due to our excellent experience with his team previously (two floor gut, with two new bathrooms). Once again, Clint’s pricing was competitive and we trust his work completely.

We purchased a 100-year-old two-family home in Arlington in the summer of 2023. The home is charming and has lots of potential but needs a lot of love. Our first step is completely renovating the two kitchens and two bathrooms. We hired a kitchen designer who gave us the names of several builders that she works with, and we talked with several of them. One was Northwoods Builders, and we chose them for our project.
Clint Keeney is easy to work with and has a fantastic crew. They are all polite and respectful to us and, just as importantly, to our home. They appreciate its quirks and charms and take the time to retain them. They ask questions as needed and offer great suggestions.
In addition to the kitchens and baths, it turned out that our front porch was structurally unsound and needed urgent work. Northwoods has taken on this additional project and the new porch is looking good!
Clint has a great set of subcontractors (plumbers, electricians, plasterer, etc.) that have worked on our home. He has done a great job of scheduling them...there hasn't been a single weekday since the project started three months ago that there hasn't been somebody here working on something. And the project has stayed on schedule despite inevitable bumps (mostly vendor shipment problems).
We wholeheartedly recommend talking to Clint about any kitchen, bath or other project.

Update: It is simply untrue, in the owner's response, that there was any discussion whatsoever of my painter fixing the siding, the kitchen island needing a showroom visit to get an initial estimate, or any need for Clint to visit again for anything other than the barn. It is really unfair to make it look like potential clients are making things up. Laurie made it clear to me that Clint only realized he wanted a second visit after two weeks with no communication and no quote I had asked for. It is also very odd that after I wrote my review, the person who wrote the first review changed their user name from Laurie Ovendon to Lynne Laurie O. If this is the Laurie I spoke with, the review isn't allowed.

I am very disappointed to be writing this review. I called Northwoods because they're local and their rehab of a historic home nearby appeared to be going well. Laurie responded to my initial email quickly, but they were booking estimates 3 weeks out. This is a long time, but I thought it might be a sign of their success and I proceeded. I told her I needed siding repairs and a kitchen island and would later need other jobs done, but not now. We scheduled the estimate. The contractor arrived and mistakenly parked at my neighbors' house and was screamed at. He re-parked at my house and said that maybe my neighbor runs a meth lab. I agreed my neighbors had acted crazy in screaming at him, but in hindsight I feel that the meth comment says more about the contractor. We went through the siding repair job and he took a few photos. I showed him where the kitchen island would go and gave him very exact specs. He agreed it was straightfoward. I also asked if he wanted to see a room I needed redone, and he agreed. I told him I just needed sheetrocking and for the trim to be prepped for new paint. He asked no other questions and took no measurements, which made no sense to me, but acted like he would add it to the estimate. I also told him my barn needs repairs, but we agreed he would look at it on another day. The barn is the only task we agreed needed a second visit. He left and never told me when I would get an estimate. I emailed Laurie after a week and a half to find out the timeline and she asked if I wanted her to text the contractor. I said whatever works for them, but that I would assume I should move on after two weeks with no update. At the two week mark, she emailed me to say the contractor needed a second visit because the details and number of tasks were somewhat unclear. This was the first time they mentioned anything being unclear, and the number of tasks were very straightfoward. There were no estimates at all, not even for the kitchen island. She said the siding could be done on time and materials, but gave no written hourly rate, not to exceed clause, or any details whatsoever. I could have ended up paying a thousand dollar or a million. She admitted that the contractors were behind and were taking two to three weeks to send estimates. We both agreed this is too long. I declined the second visit, as I refused to waste more time. Also, I hope the first review here is from a different Laurie...