HERITAGE RESTORATION INC

I was very VERY impressed by the quality of the carpentry (and I have good skills here myself).  The last guy was pretty good.  The carpenter Heritage sent, Peter, was better.  I give him my highest recommendations.
The painter they sent, Chris, to finish up the carpentry was also excellent and I highly recommended him as well.  I am notoriously picky about paint work.
The plaster work was also excellent but fairly expensive.  You get what you pay for I suppose.  I paid 4x other appraisals but I believe there was 2x work than expected.  So, we'll call it 2x the price.  Which, with Heritage's cut, is fair enough for the quality.
The bathroom tile work, however, is where it all falls apart.  As much as I like the tile guy, personally, I hesitate to recommend him.  There were good points and bad points -- mostly due to lack of experience rather than capability.  He paid good attention to detail with laying it out and cutting it.  He was, however, extremely rough with the porcelain mosaics, slapping the sheets around, and chipped many many corners.  Far too many to make him replace every chipped corner so I had him replace only the worst ones.  So, the bathroom floors, we'll call "not great" but "good enough."  The shower regrouting, however, he had no experience with and made a mess of.  He gave it a good effort and tried and tried again and seemed to eventually put it off.  It didn't look great (like someone else I had hired to do the other shower) but it was passable, at first.  Quickly, however, it has become apparent that his new grout is not waterproof for some reason and is also flaking off rapidly.  Thus, it really needs to be redone by someone who knows how to do this.  He also left a pile of grout in the drain trap that nearly clogged it completely and I had to chip most of it out while hoping to not damage the drain.  I also had to clean up the grouts and morters he threw out behind my property instead of disposing of properly.  Not very professional.  Thus, he has potential, he just needs more experience.
The tile labor alone cost more than the plaster work and that leaves me really scratching my head.  It took far too long to complete with many missed and cancelled work days.
Another disappointment was the number of billed hours versus what I recorded on site.  Heritage claimed their employees logged 75 where I recorded 51 (rounding each day up) for those particular people.  I expect hours off site but that is a huge gap for work that required little additional materials and not much work off site.  In the end, however, I was okay with the bottom line and didn't complain too much.  It is unfortunate but I suspect most people in this trade inflate their hours for one reason or another.
The final insult, however, came when I asked them to return the original spare piece of plaster stop beading they had borrowed to make replicas of.  I got only a small piece of it back and they couldn't explain why.  Arg.

After much research, I determined that keeping my old windows was not only better looking, but also a much better long-term investment for my house than new windows would have been. Now, the revived windows will be good for another lifetime (as opposed to entirely new windows which only last 10-20 years.)
The guys are all very professional and pleasant. They carefully explained all the technical stuff to me so I could make informed decisions. The bid was very detailed and included several alternatives so I could decide what fit my budget. Later, when I decided to add window-well stripping to the job, they got me an additional estimate quickly, and then scheduled the work in a timely manner.
The guys working at the house always cleaned up after themselves and were careful about not letting my pets out.
They are about 3/4 through the job now and I am very pleased so far. The only delay was caused by my own housefire. We'll be back on track soon.

Went well. Heritage did not perform the work - they acted as the contractor and hired the electrician who did the installation.
I will use this contractor again provided they perform the work. If a project looks like it will be subcontracted out, I will hire the sub directly.

A structural beam in my home was damaged. This is an exposed beam from the 1700's, they not only replaced the home to structural soundness, they found a beam that matched perfectly. The work was done quickly once the beam was located for the repair and the work was done well. The workers in my home were polite and very friendly towards all of my animals. They made a difficult time easier to deal with.

They have done a lot of work over the years on my house and they are very good. They have tremendous expertise in all types of architecture and repair. They are very knowledgeable about older houses. They repaired my fence with exactly the type of wood my fence already had so they went out of the way to make it look like the fence had never been worked on. Their prices are reasonable and when he does something it looks like it has never been done.

The job went very well. I've used HRI in the past to strip (by steam) and reglaze my old sashes (they have fabricated an enclosure specifically to steam doors and windows), and do some custom furniture alterations. I'd like to point out that one of the reasons why I use HRI is the fact that they are lead-safe certified. Having an 16 month old child at the time, lead was always a concern, and other contractors or renovators I have brought in failed miserably in that aspect, even when I told them about my concerns.On the day the job started, I had painter in as well, so Scott and Daryl coordinated with him, and got to work. They are very meticulous about keeping the job site clean - tarps were dropped in work areas, all the stops were taken outside to be pre-drilled, and they continuously vacuumed (HEPA vacuum) around the windows and floor during and after the job. Wet mopped the floors at the end of the day. I had originally scheduled them to work up to a certain price point, but was really impressed with thier work so bumped it up to complete all my windows. At the end of 2 days, what I got was properly operating windows, all dressed nicely with new interior stops installed, and the ugly blemish of paint around the thermostat was gone. That "window dressing", combined with some touch up painting around the windows I credit as one of the main reasons why my condo got an asking price offer in 1 day.I cannot say enough good things about HRI, and would not hesitate to hire them again.