PITTSTON — Nearly seven years ago, two men broke into the home of William Guerrette Jr. and savagely attacked him and his 10-year-old daughter with a machete.

The attackers nearly killed Guerrette, leaving him with permanent scars on his head, arms and neck. He required multiple surgeries to address the wounds.

“I’m pretty now,” he said, turning his head from side to side and preening a bit.

“I’m missing a piece of my skull where he chopped it out,” Guerrette said. “For a long time I looked pretty ugly. I got hit, I don’t know, a dozen times with the machete. Across the nose, in the neck, and there were 13 breaks in my arm, from the top to the tip of my missing finger.”

Surgeons grafted skin from William Guerrette’s posterior to his head as part of the treatment of the wounds.

“We call him a literal butthead,” his 25-year-old son, Ryan, said and on cue, his father explained, “My head is made up of a steak-sized piece of my butt.”

The two were lively as they spoke recently about the next generation of Guerrettes — including Ryan’s young daughter — and most excited when they talked of their new joint business venture, WOW 1-Day Painting.

But their eyes darkened when the conversation turned to Nikki Guerrette, now 17, who was far more severely injured in the home invasion on May 27, 2008.

“Generally I poke fun when I talk about myself,” her father said. “But I get bothered when I talk about Nikki.”

Early that morning, Daniel Fortune and his foster brother, Leo Hylton, crept into the Guerrettes’ home to collect a debt they said was owed to them by then-18-year-old Ryan Guerrette.

When William Guerrette awoke to the sound of an alarm, Hylton attacked him with a machete and left him for dead. Guerrette told Nikki to stay in her room, but she too was savagely assaulted.

“Nikki was called in dead,” her father said. “The police officer who first responded to the scene was told, ‘The dead girl is upstairs.’ [Nikki] heard the person say, ‘The dead girl is upstairs.’ And then he went up to see her and she nearly scared him to death. Her story is, she sat up to show him she wasn’t dead.”

The two men were convicted of aggravated attempted murder, attempted murder, elevated aggravated assault and robbery. Hylton, who admitted his role in the crimes, was sentenced to 90 years in prison with all but 50 years suspended. Fortune received two life sentences.

Nikki suffered a traumatic brain injury, with severe damage to her frontal lobe. She missed seventh and eighth grades, and struggled when she returned to public schools as a high school freshman.

But Nikki is thriving today at a charter school in Salt Lake City, where she lives with her mother during the school year, surrounded by a large extended family and near her older sister, who attends Brigham Young University. They return to Pittston for holidays and summer vacation.

Nikki recently tried out for the basketball team — she was a forward on the team last year. She also has a boyfriend — “he’s got a huge heart,” her dad said — and their photos are posted on Facebook.

“She was always spunky,” he said. “I think that’s why she lived. She’s one of those kids who, if she wasn’t a fighter, I don’t think she would have lived.”

It’s a trait clearly shared by her father – a lifelong Mainer and “serial entrepreneur.”

William Guerrette Jr. started his first business, Sounds Easy Video, during the 1980s. That video cassette rental business expanded to 16 stores before merging with Home Vision Video in the 1990s. Guerrette also started Maine’s first Subway franchise. Today, he and his brothers own 19 Sun Tan City franchises as well.

A firm believer in the structure of franchises to support small businesses, Guerrette was sold when he saw the founder of WOW 1-Day Painting make a pitch to potential franchisees on the CNBC show “Power Pitch.”

“I told Ryan, ‘I love this, but it’s 100 percent something I can’t do,” William Guerrette said. “But I think it’s something that could be big.”

William Guerrette bought the WOW 1-Day Painting franchise for the state of Maine. He and Ryan opened their business in September, and Guerrette is thrilled with his son’s success.

The company, with nearly 30 franchises across the United States and Canada, is trying to “change the paradigm of painting” to provide a better customer experience, Guerrette said.

Ryan Guerrette visits prospective clients, enters information about the job into his iPad and prints an estimate for the customer from his customized Mercedes van. With a phone call, the national office checks a master schedule for his crew’s availability, and Guerrette confirms the job.

Most of their work is interior painting, and 85 percent to 90 percent of the jobs can be completed in one day. Despite the quick turn-around time, pricing is competitive with other painters, Ryan Guerrette said.

“You can always find some guy who’s going to come in his overalls with his buddy … but who else will leave flowers and a card signed by the painters?” he asked. “And we’ll never rinse out brushes out in your sink.”

Ryan Guerrette said he picked up the entrepreneurial spirit from his father “through osmosis.”

But aside from his father’s financial backing, he said, “This is my own thing. It means something to me. I know it can work.”

William Guerrette sees the venture as a second opportunity with his son. Neither man has fully healed from the attack — William Guerrette said his son’s emotional scars are among the worst.

“For a long time, I thought it was my fault, because if I hadn’t been friends with [Fortune and Hylton], it wouldn’t have happened,” Ryan Guerrette said.

William Guerrette still feels blame as well. “Nikki was only involved because they were killing me and she came out [of her room],” he said.

When he thinks today of Fortune and Hylton, “I try to be a Christian,” he said. “I am a Christian, but as a dad and a man … well, it isn’t going to do me any good to think about what I’d do to him.”

Turning his attention back to the new business, William Guerrette said he’s grateful for this “fresh start” for his son – and for himself.

“I’m here, I’m blessed and I’m alive,” he said. “I have a second opportunity with my son.”