Robert Picone

Robert Picone Construction advertises the full range — kitchens, bathrooms, basements, whole-home remodels, additions — from an address on Arnold Terrace in Marblehead, with Robert Picone himself listed as the owner. What sits behind that list is thin: a single permit on file, a $14,000 kitchen remodel on Bayview Avenue in Danvers, pulled in March 2010 and marked complete. Nobody has written about hiring him. BuildZoom, the only place he turns up, states it has received no reviews, and the score of 0 it prints is calculated from that one permit rather than from anything a customer said. The licensing picture is the part to sort out before any money changes hands. BuildZoom lists three separate Massachusetts home improvement contractor registrations under this name — 165587, 142396 and 173427 — and marks all three inactive, saying each was at one point cancelled. The page also carries its own alert reading "no active license on file." Those are the directory's records, not a state confirmation, and three numbers for one contractor is the sort of tangle directories produce, so none of it should be taken as the last word either way. What that adds up to: ask him directly for a current Massachusetts HIC registration number and check it yourself with the Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation, because registration matters on remodeling work — it is what gives a homeowner access to the Guaranty Fund. Ask, too, for addresses and dates of recent jobs, since the written trail here runs back to a single 2010 kitchen and stops.