Dorald Design & Construction, LLC

Forty-one reviews, and the same room keeps coming up: the bathroom. Dorald Design & Construction works out of Peabody and says it serves Hamilton, Peabody and Wenham, offering custom home building, additions, remodeling, design-build and outdoor living work — but what homeowners actually wrote about, year after year, is a gut bathroom. Its Massachusetts home improvement contractor registration is active, and BBB grades it A+ while listing 20 years in business. On Google the reviews run 2019 through mid-2025 at 4.9 across 42 ratings, and they are unusually specific for a contractor page. In a March 2025 review a couple walked through a bathroom renovation start to finish and singled out organization and attention to detail; a 2022 homeowner detailed hand-cut tiling, a resurfaced ceiling, and plumbing and electrical checked before the walls closed. The bigger jobs show up too — a 2023 reviewer had a second story built on a 1950s cape, three bedrooms and two bathrooms with all-new HVAC, and a 2024 homeowner hired them for a ground-up accessory apartment designed by their own architect. Several people writing in 2024 mentioned 3D renderings, and one described putting on VR glasses to walk the design before demolition. One review cuts against all of that, and it is the one to raise. In November 2023 a homeowner wrote that the crew abandoned the job and the building inspector failed the rough framing three days later, leading to months of structural repairs, and that green shingles installed over grey were never corrected. A separate 2023 four-star reviewer later added that the shower grout hadn't been sealed. Houzz, on only two ratings, averages 3.0 — far too small a sample to weigh against 42, but it doesn't match the Google picture either. If you're planning a bathroom gut or an addition on the North Shore, this is a shop with a long, specific history of finishing that exact work. Ask how framing inspections get scheduled and signed off, get the punch list — grout sealing included — in writing, and confirm who is actually on site day to day.