Brouillard’s website, is a retrospective of his 25 years in business and a summary of how he likes to build. The website contains pictures of most of his more intricate projects, from passive-solar homes and historic restorations to woodworking projects that includes a made-to-fit bed for a contemporary home he built.

“The people at Sourcekit who designed my website were savvy enough to get the key words like ‘build,’ ‘custom,’ ‘home,’ onto the servers with the result that I am getting 10,000 hits and 500 sessions per month,” Brouillard said. “It is putting me in touch with a great number of people I would have had no chance to meet before and allowing them to see the many nice homes I’ve built and woodworking projects I’ve completed. But what I’m happiest about are the testimonials from the people I’ve worked with over the years.”

The techniques Brouillard uses are often traditional, learned from working with master carpenters, builders, and books — both past and present. Some are techniques of experience, learned and adapted from 30 years of doing. The purpose is simple: to build a strong and beautiful structure, be it a house, a handrail, or a door that will stand the test of time and satisfy him and his clients. “I have come to the point in my career where I like to draw the plans first as this gives me the best chance to gain all the needed information before my crew and I start,” Brouillard said. “Almost all problems and changes can be eliminated this way. Planning saves money.”

Brouillard has been drawing original furniture, house and restoration plans for the past 10 years. He works closely with home owners to produce plans that are true to the client’s vision and needs. “Steve’s ideas were striking and practical at the same time,” according to Brenda McCall who lives in an Orange County contemporary passive-solar home whose architectural blueprints were drawn by Brouillard and featured in The Herald Sun Real Estate section in 1995. “He was really good to work with in terms of ability and patience. I had no idea how to set the house on the land to take advantage of its unique aspects. Steve did all that, plus he helped me to understand what was going on as the home was being built. With five levels of roof line, this was a pretty complex construction. He’s an incredible carpenter.

“Steve was really good at interpreting the floor plan and the passive solar features we wanted into a really striking house. Steve had a vision, and he helped us to have a vision about this home. The vistas from each window are very beautiful day and night. We feel like we have the outdoors indoors. It’s kind of like having a picture everywhere you look on the wall,” McCall said.

In 1998 Tyson Contractors hired Brouillard to renovate and restore the historic Presbyterian manse on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill for C.D. Spangler and his wife. Master carpenter and certified restoration technologist Alfred Patterson, who has worked with Brouillard for about 25 years, worked with him on the Presbyterian manse restoration, too. “Some of the highest compliments I’ve been paid were the nods of satisfaction that Mr. Spangler gave when he would come on site to see how the work was progressing,” Brouillard said. “It meant a lot because Mr. Spangler’s been successful in the construction business for a long time.”

Brouillard has been involved with the renovation of many historic homes. “My husband and I have known Steven Brouillard in a professional capacity for over a decade,” said Leah Burt who lives with her husband Wallace in a house listed as “classic Piedmont architecture” in the Historic American Buildings Survey of 1965. Such a building, which is of post-and-beam construction, with hand-sawn beams and paneling with few true 90-degree angles, requires a thoughtful and patient approach. “Steven has demonstrated just such talents, time and again. He listens very carefully to advice and owner ideas concerning the work to be done. He then accomplishes what has to be done, within the confining constraints of an historic house,” Burt said.

Most recently, Brouillard and his team of master carpenters, were hired by Tyson-Lewis Ventures of Chapel Hill to restore and expand an 1854 two-story home for Marc and Kate Paradis in Carrboro. The original structure had four rooms – two per floor. Sometime in the 1940’s a kitchen was added onto the back, with a bathroom.

The Paradis tore the 1940’s addition off and planned to almost triple the size of the house, connecting it by a covered breezeway to a three-car garage with a studio above using layouts for a restoration and addition from the former owner, who was also an architect.

“Then Tyson-Lewis Ventures brought Steve on the job,” Paradis said. “Steve understood immediately our desire to strip the original house down to its heart pine core and then duplicate the style and features for the addition. We wanted it blended so that it would be hard to tell the old from the new.

“Steve was as dedicated and interested in the job as if it were his own home. He took a pride in his work that I don’t see very often. Together we designed the interior layout. I drew what I envisioned, and Steve drew it out so it worked. What some might see as an obstacle, Steve took on as a challenge.

“The job took a good two years to complete. Along the way we made many changes as the process unfolded. I could bounce ideas off Steve and get good information back so that my wife and I could make practical decisions.

“Steve brought in an excellent crew of reliable and talented carpenters. They, too, took the job personally and felt free to express their opinions and offer suggestions whenever they could. They got to know our family and our pets and I felt secure with them on the site. From foundation stone to roof truss, this house is one of the most solid houses anyone could build, and I credit Steve with insisting on attention to the details of its solidity (especially during the times I was away).

“Never did we find ourselves having to go back and rebuild something because it was insufficient to bear weight or out of alignment. When it came time to design and craft the handrail for the stairway, Steve truly shined. He carefully built a model, measured it against the stairs so it would flow with the incline, and rejected any but the finest beams of reclaimed pine from which he cut the rail’s pieces. You can hardly tell the finished rail is assembled from pieces. For any future developments we have on the drawing table, I’ll call Steve to execute them,” Paradis said.