Michael Ruiz

The row reads "Michael Ruiz," but the customers call him Mike, and the business they hired is Ruiz Fine Carpentry — a Marblehead finish-carpentry and remodeling outfit whose calling card is built-ins and custom woodwork rather than gut renovations. What people wrote about is the woodwork. In a September 2021 review, a homeowner described hiring the company to remodel a master bathroom and singled out the finish woodwork, along with designs and custom touches. Another 2021 reviewer described bathrooms, bedrooms and a complete first-floor renovation finished on time and on budget. A June 2022 customer wrote about a kitchen remodel and said they had already booked two more projects. Five reviews, all five stars, and the ones with any detail in them all point the same direction: joinery, trim, cabinetry, built-ins. The permit record lines up with that. Five Marblehead permits filed in the first week of October 2021 cover a $30,250 master bathroom on Brookhouse Drive, a $33,000 basement remodel with a half bath on Carlton Road, bathroom remodels on Highland Terrace and Brookhouse Drive, and a $24,000 conversion of a shop into a single-family dwelling on Central Street with a small kitchen and two bathroom build-outs. Every one of them is inside Marblehead. Two things need checking before you call. The written record stops in 2022 — no reviews since June of that year, and nothing permitted since October 2021, so there is nothing recent to judge current availability or current work by. And the licensing is unresolved: BuildZoom lists Massachusetts Home Improvement Contractor registration 175238 under this name and address as inactive, saying Consumer Affairs shows it was at one point cancelled, while the same page's own summary calls it a general contractor licence that expired in May 2026. Those are contradictory accounts from one directory, and neither has been confirmed against the state. Kitchens and bathrooms are not exempt work in Massachusetts — an HIC registration is the thing that gives a homeowner access to the Guaranty Fund — so ask him directly for the current registration number and check it with the Office of Consumer Affairs yourself. One more note on the reviews: one of the five is from someone who says he has worked with Mike on many custom projects, which reads as a repeat trade relationship rather than a one-off homeowner job. Weigh it accordingly. If you want custom cabinetry, built-ins or a bathroom where the trim work is the point, this is a plausible call — with the licence question answered first and recent references asked for, given how far back the published record now sits.