EVM Home Improvement & Painting

Across 486 Google ratings the average never moves off 5★, and 69 of those reviews landed in the last six months alone. EVM Home Improvement & Painting works out of Leominster, and it gets hired for two kinds of job: paint — interiors, exteriors, trim, a peeling backyard shed — and renovations taken a room at a time. A 2024 press release names Gabe Elias and LJ Van Molle as its founders and announced an expansion across Massachusetts; that same summer, the Sentinel & Enterprise credited the crew with a volunteer facelift at Fitchburg High School. Painting is the through-line, and the descriptions get specific. A living-room wall left with the space "immaculate." A 150-year-old bathroom brought back with paint and flooring in June 2026. An exterior estimate reworked with the homeowner until the colors were settled, in a May 2026 job where the painter listened to requests and worked carefully around what shouldn't get sprayed. Two names surface again and again: LJ, who scopes and schedules, and Durval, who runs the crew — one customer who booked two full bathroom remodels in June 2026 wrote that Durval kept constant communication while the household's only bathrooms were torn up. The history on this profile reaches back further than the EVM name. A second Google listing, 28 ratings, carries 2022 through mid-2025 reviews for SM Remodeling: back stairs rebuilt in June 2025 with added reinforcement for a chair lift, a patio-project stair rebuild in April 2025, a January 2025 write-up from a customer who started with front stairs and a bow window and kept calling back. The same shape of work, a different name on the reviews. One review breaks the pattern, and it's the one to read before any money moves. In October 2025 a customer wrote that a $3,950 deposit was taken and never returned, that they had signed a proposal but never a contract, and that no paint color had even been chosen. It is a single complaint against a long run of positive ones, and the company's Massachusetts home improvement contractor registration 208423 is registry-verified active — a second registration, 201224, is verified active as well, and the BBB grades the business A. But the thing that reviewer describes is avoidable: put scope, colors and refund terms in a signed contract before a deposit changes hands. For painting and mid-size renovation work — bathrooms, kitchens, attics, decks, porches, trim — this is a straightforward call, with enough recent and detailed reviews to know what you're buying. Get the contract in writing first, and on a remodel that touches wiring or plumbing, ask who holds those licences.