Rui Costa

The permits tell you what Rui Costa actually does. Sixteen of them sit under his name around Methuen and Haverhill — nine in the last three years — and they read like a punch list of the harder outdoor work: fieldstone and granite steps torn out and rebuilt, retaining walls footed and set, roofs stripped and re-shingled, siding replaced. Typical job value, about $23,900. The business behind them is Costa's Masonry, at the same Methuen address, running since 1999 as a sole proprietorship with one employee. Its own description puts masonry first: tile, ceramic, stone and brick, commercial and residential, with a Master Mason badge on its Houzz page. The permit trail runs wider than stonework, though. Full bathroom gut-and-rebuilds show up more than once — partition walls and tubs removed, a walk-in shower framed, new valves and drains, porcelain tile throughout — which is the kind of job where a stone-and-tile background helps rather than stretches. Credentials hold up where it counts: his Massachusetts home improvement contractor registration (#191191) is active. BuildZoom also lists a construction supervisor licence, CS-112072; that is the site's own record rather than a confirmation, so get the number in writing if your job touches structure. The BBB grade is A+ and no complaints appear on the profile, though the business is not BBB accredited — two different things worth keeping straight. The gap is reputation. Across BuildZoom, Houzz and the BBB there is a single customer review, now a couple of years old. For a one-man shop with more than two decades behind it, that is unusually quiet, and it means nothing here tells you how the finished work holds up or how the scheduling goes. The paperwork has a wrinkle too: BuildZoom's write-up credits seven years of experience while the BBB and Houzz both date the business to 1999. Right call for a homeowner in the Methuen-Haverhill corridor with masonry-adjacent work — front steps, a retaining wall, a stone-and-tile bathroom — who is willing to do the reference-checking themselves. Ask for the last few addresses he permitted, go look at the stonework, and confirm the supervisor licence before anything structural begins.