Coolock Construction

The most telling job in Coolock Construction's history is a small one. In a 2022 review, a South End homeowner described the crew installing an air-conditioning return vent an earlier contractor had skipped — and noticing, before she did, that the drywall inside the opening needed painting to match the wall so you wouldn't see a dark gap through the slats. That is the shape of this Boston outfit. David McGrath runs it from 17 Cazenove St in the South End, with one employee on the BBB's count, and the company says it has been trading since 2009 — a third-generation contractor with Irish roots who works the old neighborhoods: Back Bay, Beacon Hill, South Boston. Its Massachusetts home improvement contractor registration is active and held in the company's own name. Eleven reviews sit across Google, Houzz and the directories, all of them five stars, and the specifics carry more weight than the number. A homeowner writing in April 2026 credited McGrath on a deck build. In a 2023 review, a customer described the team rebuilding a kitchen ceiling and an interior wall after a burst pipe, praising clear start and finish dates and a jobsite left livable for the family. In 2020 another described walls opened, spray-foamed, drywalled and painted in four days, with progress photos along the way. Earlier accounts from 2019 and 2022 cover a kitchen renovation finished on time and on budget, a new Back Bay roof, and doors and molding fitted in awkward corners. Two things are worth pinning down before you call. Houzz lists more than fifty services under the name — everything from basement waterproofing and foundation repair to chimney construction and home inspection — which is a very wide net for a one-employee company, so ask who actually performs the trade your job needs and who subcontracts. And the BBB file shows an A+ rating on a business that is explicitly not BBB accredited; those are two separate facts, not one endorsement. The BBB also records an older home improvement registration number, 193453, which is not the number the state shows active today. Best suited to condo and townhouse work in Boston's older housing stock — renovations, water-damage repairs, decks and finish work, where a hands-on owner checking the job daily is what people keep describing. Confirm the current registration number against the state, and ask for the two most recent jobs closest to yours.