32 Main Street, Essex. A new carriage house where the garage stood.
About · Old Lyme, Connecticut
Builders on the Connecticut shoreline since 1945
Mario Sapia Sr. started the company. His son, Sal, ran it from Essex for the decades that followed. His grandson, Nick, runs it now from Old Lyme, with a carpentry crew that frames every house and hangs every door, a shop that builds the millwork, and 17 awards since 2012.
Sal Sapia’s letterhead read Salvatore Sapia, Essex, Connecticut: Building Contractor, Designer. Both halves of that line still describe the company. It builds from other offices’ drawings (Centerbrook, Hendricks Churchill, Tom Lontine, Scot Samuelson) and it draws its own.
Nick learned the trade on his father’s jobs, then left for Northeastern University and 6 years of work in Boston. He came back to the Connecticut River valley in 2006 as Sal’s partner, running concepts, sales and marketing as well as the building. Sal retired in 2010, and Nick ran every part of the company after that: estimating, scheduling, cost control, project management and the client relationship. When the work surged in 2020, Sean Lagace grew into the project manager’s role; the estimating, the cost control and the client relationship stayed with Nick.
The company is small by design and builds a few projects at a time. He photographs the finished work too; the pictures on this site are his, apart from 2 projects credited to other photographers.
What we build
New houses. Shingle, gambrel and modern houses built from the foundation up, with the framing, trim and millwork done by the company’s own crew and shop. On this site: Deep River Residence, Black Point Gambrel, Riverbend and Meetinghouse Lane.
Antique houses. Restoration of 18th- and 19th-century frames, keeping what can be kept and rebuilding the rest to match: a 1746 gambrel in Essex taken back to its frame (Riverleigh), and a 1799 house in Essex whose floor systems came out and went back in level while it stood on shoring (32 Main Street).
Additions and renovations. Kitchens, baths, lower levels and connecting wings, most of them in houses that stayed lived in. Book Hill and River Road are 2 of them.
Commercial and institutional. A bank turned into a restaurant in Chester (Six Main), a cherry-paneled hall at a school in New London (The Williams Room), and the exterior of a 1921 gallery in Old Lyme rebuilt with the galleries open (Lyme Art Association). Offices and restaurant space are a regular part of the work.
Building performance. Certified Green Professional since 2011, Energy Star Partner and DOE Zero Energy Ready Home partner. Old Black Point in Niantic tested at HERS 39 and 0.62 ACH50.
One crew, framing to finish
There is no subcontracted carpentry on a Sapia job. The people who frame the building are the people who set the windows, run the trim and hang the doors, which is why the framing and the finish tend to agree with each other.
At Meetinghouse Lane in Old Lyme, a 19th-century barn standing in another Connecticut town was shored, taken down, trucked to the site and raised again on a new foundation, with new posts and braces let in beside the hand-hewn timbers. The crew that frames the company’s houses did it. There was no timber-framing subcontractor. The core of that crew has worked together for 20 years.
At 32 Main Street in Essex, a 1799 house, 3 floor systems came out of the original post-and-beam frame and went back in level while the house stood on shoring. The coffered ceilings were worked out on the job from mock-ups built by Sean Lagace, the company’s project manager and master carpenter.
At a barn-style house in Ivoryton, the 3-story stair has 362 balusters and its newel posts, all milled on the job from 20 pieces of local red pine out of Moodus.
Nick Sapia, 2020
The shop
Paneling, built-in cupboards, mantels, window seats and cabinetry come out of the company’s own shop, a full millshop in Essex. A reveal that has to hold across a whole house is decided at the bench, before the stock reaches the job.
It also means a door style or a stain can be settled in front of the client with a sample in hand, and that an original sash can come off a house, be rehung in a new frame on new butts, and go back with its old glass.
Nick Sapia, on Riverleigh, 2014
“Sometimes, the simpler the detail, the harder it is to achieve.”
Nick Sapia, on a 1958 house in Essex, 2015Reading drawings, and drawing them
Most of the company’s work is built from an architect’s set, and several of those architects have come back. The company has built repeatedly for Scot Samuelson, among them the 1799 house on Main Street in Essex, a 1932 J. Frederick Kelly house on the Lieutenant River in Old Lyme, and the addition on the diagonal at River Bank Lane. It has built 2 houses for Tom Lontine, in 2 different registers: board-formed concrete on blasted ledge in Deep River, and a shingled house in Old Lyme lined in painted board.
The rest are drawn in-house, by Nick. The first to win an award was his own house, a Cape in Old Lyme that he redesigned and the company rebuilt; it took the 2012 HOBI for Best Residential Remodel. At Book Hill in Essex, where the company rebuilt a mid-century house to Schappacher White’s drawings in 2015, it came back a decade later and drew the carport, the gate, the pool deck, a pavilion and a greenhouse itself.
How a job runs
Early, and in writing
The drawings are read for design intent before anything is priced. Questions go back to the architect in writing and early, so details get settled in preconstruction rather than in the field.
Priced from the ground up
Quantities are taken off in-house and checked against vendor takeoffs. The key trades walk the site with a set of plans before they price, and the estimate lists what it includes, what it excludes and the areas of concern.
Open books
The budget stays open for the life of the job. Every invoice carries the subcontractor and supplier invoices behind it and the crew’s logged hours, so the client sees what the builder sees.
Updates that separate the lists
Written progress updates keep the decisions waiting on the client apart from the work the company owes.
Closeout
A joint final walk-through, a signed punch list, and a 1-year builder’s warranty covering the company’s work and its subcontractors’.
“My best projects involve early dialogue and an open budget.”
Nick Sapia, 2020The record
Since 2012: 17 awards, 12 of them HOBI Awards, 3 AIA Connecticut Alice Washburn Awards and 2 Best of Houzz. The HOBI Awards come from the Home Builders & Remodelers Association of Connecticut; the 2019 Project of the Year went to the house at 32 Main Street. The Alice Washburn Awards come from AIA Connecticut, for 15 Academy Lane and the 32 Main Street carriage house.
The company is a Department of Energy Zero Energy Ready Home partner. A house it built with Trillium Architects at Old Black Point tested at HERS 39 and 0.62 air changes per hour at 50 pascals, rated by an independent RESNET rater.
| Year | Award | Project |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Alice Washburn Award, Pool House AIA Connecticut | 15 Academy Lane, Old Lyme |
| 2024 | Alice Washburn Award, Historic Renovation AIA Connecticut | 15 Academy Lane, Old Lyme |
| 2024 | Outstanding Pool House | 15 Academy Lane, Old Lyme |
| 2023 | Outstanding Historic Rehabilitation | 15 Academy Lane, Old Lyme |
| 2021 | Best Healthy Home | Old Black Point, Niantic |
| 2020 | Alice Washburn Award, Accessory Building AIA Connecticut | 32 Main Street carriage house, Essex |
| 2019 | Project of the Year | 32 Main Street, Essex |
| 2019 | Best Historic Rehabilitation | 32 Main Street, Essex |
| 2019 | Best Accessory Building | 32 Main Street carriage house, Essex |
| 2015 | Best Residential Remodel | Book Hill, Essex |
| 2015 | Best Kitchen Remodel | Book Hill, Essex |
| 2014 | Best Antique Home Restoration | Riverleigh, Essex |
| 2013 | Best Adaptive Reuse | Six Main, Chester |
| 2013 | Best Lower Level Remodel | River Road, Essex |
| 2012 | Best Residential Remodel | A Cape in Old Lyme |
Tom Lontine’s house in the woods at Deep River. General contractor: Sapia Builders.
Scot Samuelson’s renovation of the 1799 house in Essex Village. General contractor: Sapia Builders.
The HOBI Project of the Year story, naming Nick Sapia “master carpenter and builder.”
“Smooth Sailing,” on the Whidden family’s carriage house on River Road in Essex.
Start a conversation
“I like walking into a place and seeing what it could be. Then I get to build it.”Nick Sapia
Old Lyme · Essex · Deep River · Chester · Niantic · Old Saybrook · Killingworth · New London