Cote & Foster Contracting, Inc.

One hundred building permits sit under Cote & Foster's name in the Merrimack Valley — kitchens opened up, decks torn down and rebuilt, three-season rooms, a burned garage put back after a fire, additions in the $100k-to-$300k range. That is the clearest thing about this Methuen company: the work is documented in town records, not just marketed. Steve Cote and Bill Foster run it, and the company tells its story as a friendship — the two met in first grade, graduated from Greater Lawrence Technical School in 1984, and say a civil engineering background lets them draw plans in-house instead of sending clients to an architect. They describe the business as family-owned and operated across the Merrimack Valley and North Shore of Massachusetts into New Hampshire; BBB puts the operation at 40 years and 15 employees. Its Massachusetts home improvement contractor registration, number 107602, is active. BuildZoom also lists an active construction supervisor licence and scores the company 95, above 78 percent of Massachusetts contractors, and BBB gives the profile an A+ with no complaints published. It is not BBB-accredited, and it turns up as a Methuen Chamber of Commerce member. What's thin is written customer history. Google averages five stars across seven ratings and Houzz five across three, but only one review actually says anything: this month a homeowner wrote about a house Cote & Foster built for them after seeing the crew's work around their neighborhood, and singled out the team being blunt about design choices — telling them when something was out of style rather than nodding along. One account, however good, is not a pattern. Two things to ask about. BuildZoom shows an older home improvement registration, number 210385, as inactive and at one point cancelled, so ask which registration your contract will be written under and confirm the current one covers your job. And the company's own numbers for how long it has been in business shift around — the site says 33 years in one place and 36 in another, while BBB counts 40 — worth pinning down if longevity matters to you. Best suited to a substantial project: an addition, a custom build, a whole-kitchen or historic-house job where in-house design and permit fluency earn their keep. Ask for addresses from the permit history near you and go look at the work, since the online review trail is too short to lean on.