E&B General Painting & Carpentry

Ninety-one Google ratings, an unbroken run of five stars, and one name running through nearly all of them: Rufino, who reviewers identify as the owner. E&B General Painting & Carpentry works out of Lynn and gets hired for the jobs where paint is only half the work — older New England houses that need scraping, stripping and rot repair before a brush ever touches them. The through-line across six years of reviews is prep. A homeowner writing in May 2026 about a 180-year-old house described the crew repairing wood rot and damaged areas before painting; a 2024 review of an 80s contemporary in the woods listed the whole sequence — scraped, sanded, caulked, filled, primed, then every rotted section of siding and trim replaced. Recent customers say the same thing in shorter form: on time, efficient with the prep, careful with the detail. The carpentry half is real work, not a footnote. In 2026 the crew built a bedroom closet and stripped three different gutter systems — aluminum, copper and wood, across multiple stories — replacing them with new aluminum. Decks and porches recur through 2024 and 2025: a new deck finished on budget, a mahogany deck and battered front door brought back, a porch reworked with extra storage underneath. Price comes up almost as often as prep, and it lands the same way. Reviewers call it fair and reasonable rather than cheapest — a homeowner in 2023 said the quote was neither the lowest nor the highest, but it was the one that spelled out primer quality, prep scope and coat count. Several have hired the crew twice; one writing in 2024 was on their third job, and others passed the number to parents, friends and neighbors. What's worth pinning down is scope, because the mix here is unusually wide: painting, carpentry, gutters, decks, siding repair, and in one 2025 job an entire roof. Ask for the carpentry and repair portion itemized alongside the paint, so both halves of the estimate are clear before anyone starts. The right call for an older house whose exterior needs more than a coat of paint, and for homeowners who'd rather pay for prep than repaint in three years. Confirm what the estimate covers on rot and trim replacement, and nail down the schedule — nine written accounts in the last six months suggest the calendar fills.