Handy Mann Installs

Handy Mann Installs is Michael Mann, working out of 91 Hadley Rd in Merrimac, and the clearest picture of what he does comes not from reviews but from town permits: 13 permitted residential projects, the oldest from 2010, the newest from 2024. Those permits are more revealing than the handyman label. One 2024 job gutted two bathrooms to the studs — blueboard and plaster, tile walls and floor, blocking for grab bars, a new vanity — at a $30,000 valuation. Others replaced garage windows and 400 square feet of clapboard siding, rebuilt decks, and swapped kitchen cabinets across Merrimac, Chelmsford, Westford, Tewksbury and Methuen. This is a small carpentry-and-remodel operation, not a hang-a-TV handyman. What customers have said, though, is thin and old. Angi and HomeAdvisor both show 5.0 — but they are the same page and the same two comments, both from 2018, so that number rests on an eight-year-old pair. BuildZoom carries no reviews at all; its score of 96 counts permits, not customers. Two things worth raising before you call. BuildZoom lists a Massachusetts home improvement contractor registration, #161534, and says it checked it as active in March 2026 — that is the directory's claim, so ask to see the registration and confirm it with Consumer Affairs yourself. The two sites also disagree on how long he has been at this: Angi says 24 years, BuildZoom says 16, with permits starting in 2010. Several town permits are recorded as expired rather than final, which usually means a job was never signed off, so ask which ones closed out. The right fit is a homeowner who wants one experienced pair of hands for a bathroom, a deck, or cabinet and window work in the Merrimack Valley, and who is willing to judge him on the permit trail and fresh references rather than a current review history. Ask for two or three jobs from the past year you can go and look at.