Primitive Construction LLC

About

Primitive Construction is a home remodel contractor specializing in Design/ Build projects in older homes on Long Island. Services include fine carpentry and painting, kitchens and bathrooms, and whole house renovations. Licensed and insured in Nassau and Suffolk counties.

The company has been providing high quality renovation and restoration services since 2001. Founded by the son of a house painter and architectural color consultant, craftsman Blake Carroll has been immersed in giving new life to old homes since he started his apprenticeship at age twelve. Growing-up he tagged along with his parents to their meetings at San Francisco Victoriana, a Victorian restoration guild where carpenters, plaster casters, reproduction wallpaper makers, and other skilled craftspeople were sharing their knowledge and working together to restore the Victorians of San Francisco to their former glory.

Blake spent the weekends and summers of his teen years restoring interiors and exteriors of grand Victorian homes, and learning how to repair and skim coat plaster walls and ceilings. Having completed his painting and taping apprenticeship he founded Primitive Construction in 2001, and expanded his skillset by teaching himself to be a carpenter.

In 2008 he took a trip to Detroit and marveled at the vast amount of beautiful homes in dire need of repair. Feeling a calling to bring his skills to a city with so many buildings in need to of renovation he moved to the Motor City and got his Master Builders license. Detroit had far less demand for fine painting, so he found himself working primarily as a carpenter often helping people through whole house renovations of neglected properties they had bought at the notorious auctions for $500. These gut renovation projects gave him a passion for Design/ Build work and an understanding of houses as a whole. Starting with basically just a shell, the process of designing layouts, moving walls, making structural changes, as well as developing plumbing, electrical and heating plans from scratch melded with his love of restoring architectural details. In those 13 years in Detroit the homes and the people he worked with proved to be the great teachers of his second apprenticeship as a remodel contractor.

In 2021 Primitive Construction started another chapter and moved to Long Island, New York. So far it has led into an entirely new and unexpected direction working at the Bronx Museum fabricating sculptures for artists. This has been an exciting journey into another passion of Blake’s- the arts and his background as an artist. In 2022 Primitive Construction was lucky to be chosen to fabricate a large stepped pyramid in the lobby of the museum. We look forward to working with artists to assist them in creating their work.

As 2023 starts Primitive Construction has acquired licenses in Nassau and Suffolk Counties on Long Island and we are looking for clients and general contractors to collaborate with on residential and commercial projects. This year we have also been inspired by the Fine Homebuilding “Pretty Good House” series and are currently taking a training course on building well designed, affordable and practicable energy efficient homes which is a new frontier we seek to step into sometime in the future.