Our Mission
To act as a community hub for residents, craftspeople, and merchants who choose restoration over replacement.
Every Piece Has a Story. So Do We.
For decades, we've helped people preserve the objects that matter most. Not because they're new, but because they're meaningful.
It started with the things nobody else would take.
Until 2017, RARE Restoration was known as Village Green Renewal. The name was different; the work was the same. People brought in lamps that wouldn't light, chairs that wouldn't hold, and heirlooms that had been quietly waiting in a closet for someone willing to try.
In 2017, Seth partnered with his longtime friend and business associate, Kamaul Reid, to form RARE Services: bringing restoration, moving, and in-home handiwork under one shared vision.
That partnership is why we can meet a piece wherever it is: pick it up from a third-floor walk-up, repair it on the bench, and set it back down where it belongs.
Restoration Is About More Than Objects
Most of what comes through our door isn't valuable in the way an appraiser means it. It's valuable because of who owned it, where it sat, and what happened around it.
So the work is partly technical and partly custodial. We're preserving memories. We're respecting the person who built the thing in the first place, often with tools not far from ours. We're keeping one more object out of the waste stream, and extending the life of something that still has decades left in it.
Mostly, we're helping people keep the things that make a house feel like home.
"If it can be fixed, it probably should be."
Mission, Philosophy & Promise
Our Philosophy
We believe we live on Earth as guests, and future guests should be glad we were here. This philosophy influences how we work, how we restore, and how we care for the community around us.
Our Promise
To serve our community through honest, skilled, and prompt work at a fair price and to be there when our neighbors need us.
Our Workshop
A working shop, not a showroom.
Sawdust on the floor, clamps in use, half a dozen pieces in progress at any given moment. This is where things get made whole again.
Why we believe in restoration.
Repair is the original sustainability.
Every piece we keep in service is one that doesn't get hauled away, and one that doesn't have to be manufactured and shipped to replace it. That math has always been true; it just matters more now.
Objects carry family history.
A wobbly chair is rarely just a chair. It's the one at the head of the table, the one someone's grandfather made, the one the kids will fight over someday. We work on it accordingly.
Trades survive by being used.
Seat weaving, spindle duplication, hand carving, lamp rewiring. These skills stay alive only when people still ask for them. Every job is a small vote for keeping them here.
Local work builds local trust.
We're a shop in Newton with neighbors in Greater Boston. Being reachable, honest about what we can and can't do, and prompt about it is the whole business.
How we got here.
Then
Village Green Renewal
A small restoration shop with a simple premise: fix the things people were being told to throw away.
Years
Serving the community
Season after season of lamps, chairs, heirlooms and oddities, and the relationships that came with them.
2017
RARE Services is formed
Seth partners with Kamaul Reid, bringing restoration, moving and in-home handiwork under one shared vision.
Today
Acquired by Catchlight Painting
Still at the bench, continuing to restore meaningful objects throughout Greater Boston from our Newton workshop.
Every Restoration Begins With a Conversation.
Whether it's a cherished family heirloom, a favorite lamp, or something entirely unexpected, we'd love to hear its story.