Deborah Paine, formerly of North Truro, a custom home builder and general contractor known for her expertise in historic restoration, died on June 25, 2025 at Midcoast Hospital in Brunswick, Maine of a bacterial infection. She was 72.
“She had an incredible knowledge of town and coastal building, with tricks that coastal builders knew in the 18th and 19th centuries,” said Provincetown designer David Cafiero, who worked with Deborah on many historically significant restoration projects in town, including the Hawthorne Barn on Miller Hill and the Hofmann House in the West End.
“Deborah could forensically figure things out,” Cafiero said. “She was fascinated by joists and footings and always looked at the internal integrity of the house before she looked at the outside aesthetic.”
Born on Aug. 27, 1952 in Portland, Maine, she was raised on Peaks Island, a small community opposite Portland’s harbor, by her father, William, a merchant mariner, and her mother, Iris. With no surviving family members — and because she was intensely private, according to friends and colleagues — the details of Deborah’s early life are fuzzy.
“I grew up on an island off the coast of Maine,” she told Cape Cod Life in a 2019 article about her North Truro home. “The cottage we had was crafted from six lumberjack shacks put together. It had been in the family for over 90 years. It wasn’t much, but it was just as charming as it could be.” The building clearly had an effect on her.
“I was one of those kids who grew up always building, sketching, and drawing houses,” she told the Independent in a 2020 article about her craft.
Deb spent part of her early adulthood in Malibu, Calif., working in hospitality, including for Marriott, according to longtime friend Rob DeSousa. She was a skilled electrician and carpenter when they met in the early 1980s doing carpentry work on a friend’s restaurant on Peaks Island, he said. It would be the first of several projects they did together.
“She was self-taught, and she read constantly,” said Rob, and she soon “started getting really creative” — at one point purchasing a long narrow building that had been a shooting gallery, where “nothing would grow in the back yard because there was so much lead” from ammunition, he said. Deb renovated it into a beautiful home, living in a small generator shack on the property until the house was done.
“I love taking things apart and putting them back together again,” Deb told Cape Cod Life.
Deb came to Provincetown in 1989 because of its gay community, she told the Independent in 2020, and launched her business here that same year. Even here, she said, “the adage that women have to work twice as hard as men to prove themselves every day is very true.”
She also said it took a while for her parents, who had tried to dissuade her from a career in construction, “to acknowledge that I really was quite good at it.”
She was among the very best, according to those who worked with her.
“Deb Paine was one of Provincetown’s most respected builders,” said preservationist Ginny Binder, who met Deb when she first came to town and was hired to build stairs and a bookcase for her sister. “Known for her precision, integrity, and deep respect for the town’s architectural heritage, she demonstrated how historic homes can be thoughtfully preserved while adapted for modern life.”
Deb and Ginny served together on the town’s historical commission and later partnered on many projects, with Ginny often acting as “therapist” for the client while Deb would deliver a budget so accurate it could scare people, Ginny said.
Subcontractors and colleagues admired her precision, Ginny said. “She wouldn’t raise her voice, but she just wouldn’t bend. That’s what made her great. She was in a league of her own.”
David said that Deb was “like an older sister and a stern headmistress” who “talked me out of some crazy ideas” with careful explanations. Working with her was “a tough learning lesson, but there was always a solution and a correct answer, and she made you get there on your own.”
She also had a sense of humor. “She was stern, she got the job done, and she did it correctly, but she was hysterical,” said Rob. “We would be falling down in the street laughing at each other.”
Her manner was that of a true New Englander, said Melinda Levy of Sacramento, Calif., who met Deb in the ’90s and leaned on her for professional advice in recent years. “There’s nothing like getting her to really laugh hard — it was an achievement for me.”
Deb has no surviving family, but her work “can be seen throughout town in homes that are both beautiful and resilient,” said Ginny. “Deb’s legacy lives on in the structures she shaped and in the people she taught by example.”
