Apex Carpentry LLC

Apex Carpentry has been building and renovating homes out of Swampscott since 1988. The company describes itself as a family firm founded by Louis Spagnoli Sr., a former City of Boston building inspector, and now co-owned and run by his sons John and Louis Spagnoli; the Better Business Bureau lists it as an eight-person LLC incorporated in Massachusetts in 2004 that also trades as Apex Contracting. Its Massachusetts home improvement contractor registration (#123150) is active in the state registry, and the BBB grades it A+ without accrediting it. The work it is hired for runs from fine carpentry to whole projects: custom home building, whole-house remodels, kitchen and bath renovations, additions, decks, architectural millwork and period restorations, with a stated service area covering Boston and the North Shore from Beverly and Marblehead to Peabody and Salem. BuildZoom's permit history shows 17 projects, four of them in the last three years, including a $1,177,705 addition, siding, trim and window renovation in Marblehead in 2024 and a $467,900 Marblehead addition in 2023. What homeowners wrote is uniformly positive but dated. In four Houzz reviews from the spring of 2015, one client described a fully custom home where every detail was built to order and said the Spagnolis were still helping after the job closed; another had custom deck benches built and a fireplace wall refaced in walnut floor to ceiling, and was surprised so small a job was accepted and treated seriously; a third named John Spagnoli's courtesy, schedule discipline and team of project managers; a fourth praised the craftsmanship, client relations and project management on a gutted kitchen and living area. A 2018 Google review adds two words, "awesome workmanship", and Google shows 5 stars from 2 ratings. Nothing written since 2018 was found. Two things are worth a question before you sign. U.S. Department of Labor records show an OSHA inspection of an Apex job site on Auburndale Road in Marblehead in 2010 that ended in two citations and $1,050 in proposed penalties. And the directories do not agree on who runs the business: BuildZoom names Bruce McCarthy as owner while also listing John and Louis Spagnoli among its people, whereas the BBB and the company's own site name the Spagnoli brothers. Houzz also shows a licence number, 024784, that differs from the state's home improvement registration. Apex is the kind of firm to call for a larger custom carpentry or remodeling project on the North Shore where you want one family-run crew from framing to finish. Ask for recent references, since the written praise is a decade old, and confirm who will be running your job.