Creative Edge Pools

Creative Edge Pools builds in-ground gunite pools out of Wilmington, Massachusetts — the excavation, the shell, the plumbing and the stonework around it — and its site says it works across Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. David and Lisa Brabant run it, and the company calls itself family-owned with 16 years behind it. The work runs wider than the pool itself: landscape excavation, hardscaping, masonry and site work on the build side, then renovations, vinyl liner replacement, openings and closings, and pool removal when a pool has reached the end. Its Massachusetts home improvement contractor registration, #198140, is active on the state registry, and BuildZoom lists 30 permitted projects across the North Shore. What customers have written is critical, and the detailed account is a decade old. In a 2016 BuildZoom review, a one-star customer described constant no-shows over the project — even after taking personal time off work — and called the office staff rude and unprofessional; BuildZoom's profile adds that the same reviewer alleged an incomplete pool, live electrical wires and leaking plumbing. On BBB, where the company carries an A+ grade without being an accredited business, a reviewer complains that costs escalated unexpectedly as a pool project went on. A gunite pool is a months-long build with several trades in the hole at once, so put the two sore points from those accounts in the contract: a written schedule with dates and a remedy if crews do not show, and a fixed price with a named, signed process for change orders. Ask to see two recent North Shore builds in person, and ask who inspects and signs off on the electrical and plumbing hookups before the pool is filled.