Macomber Carpentry Con

Seventy-four building permits, some of them a quarter of a million dollars, and not one review anywhere. Macomber Carpentry & Construction works out of Tewksbury under Russell S. Macomber, and its whole public footprint is paperwork rather than customer voices. The permits say more than the marketing does. They cluster in expensive inner-suburb housing stock — a $287,500 garage enlargement and front-entry rebuild in Brookline, a $227,010 job in Chestnut Hill covering two second-floor bathrooms and finishes in three bedrooms, a $123,960 exterior repair in Weston taking in roof, siding, columns, decking, skylights and a rebuilt fireplace. On the North Shore, the record shows two jobs at one Marblehead address: a $152,000 kitchen gut and a $12,000 structural beam and ridge replacement. On Houzz the company describes itself as family owned and operated since 1987, a full-service remodeling and construction firm, and lists concierge work — handyman jobs, repairs, maintenance — alongside the big renovations. It claims to be fully licensed and insured, cites a LEED credential, and points to a 2011 Remodeling Magazine design merit award and 2012 features in Home Renovation Trends and New England Home. All of that is the company's own account of itself; none of it is independently confirmed here. The licence picture needs checking rather than trusting. BuildZoom lists an active Massachusetts home improvement contractor registration, 205460, and an active construction supervisor licence, CS-054833, but its own bookkeeping on this page is internally inconsistent, and it separately shows an earlier home improvement registration, 104003, as inactive and at one point cancelled. This reads as a builder for a substantial renovation in Boston's western suburbs — the kind of job that runs six figures and needs structural work — rather than for a small repair. Because nobody has written publicly about working with them, ask for the addresses of two or three recent permitted jobs and for references, and confirm the HIC and construction supervisor numbers yourself with the Office of Consumer Affairs and the Department of Public Safety.