Shawn Cayer's crews build the kind of house that ends up in a magazine — and, going by the reviews, the kind of project where the client is still on friendly terms with the builder two years later. Windhill Builders works out of 16 Market Street in Ipswich, on Boston's North Shore, taking on custom homes, large additions and whole-house renovations, with an in-house woodworking and cabinetry shop in Georgetown feeding the built-ins. Its Massachusetts home improvement contractor registration is active.
The scale is the first thing to understand. Building permits record a $723,000 bathroom, cabinetry and interior job in Middleton in 2025, a $436,000 kitchen and bath renovation in Wenham in 2024, and an $817,000 ground-up beachfront build in Salisbury. Houzz puts typical job cost at $100,000 to $6 million. This is not the shop you call for a punch list.
What clients write about is the management, not the marketing. A 2021 reviewer who spent two years building a house in Annisquam said the team handled a couple of surprises with honesty and grace, and was still tying up loose ends months after construction wrapped — which reads as praise precisely because it isn't phrased as any. In a 2020 account of a ground-up build, a homeowner credited the construction manager with daily texts, calls and meetings, and said the subcontractors — foundation, framing, insulation, painting, electrical, cabinetry, flooring, AV — were uniformly good, which is a rare thing to hear about a full trade stack. A 2024 client had an addition built with a new kitchen and primary suite while still living in the house with young children, and singled out the vetting of Windhill's suppliers and tradespeople.
The awards line up behind that: Best of Boston in 2019, Best of North Shore Home every year from 2017 through 2022, Chrysalis Awards in 2015 and 2016, and Best of Houzz from 2014 to 2018. The BBB grades them A+ with no complaints or government actions published, and Houzz sits at 4.9 across 37 ratings.
Two things to pin down before you call. Tenure is muddled: the company's own site says Cayer founded Windhill in 2003 and elsewhere describes over thirty years in business, while the BBB records the LLC as starting in 2013 — worth asking directly what the continuous history is. And the written history thins out, with the newest substantive account dating to September 2024.
For a custom home, a large addition, or a renovation where cabinetry and finish work carry the job, this is a well-documented choice with real awards behind it. Price the scope early — the numbers on their permit record start high — and ask who your construction manager will be, because that is the person clients name.