A hundred and two permits since 2019, at a typical value near $293,000 — that figure tells you what kind of shop PEGASUS Design-To-Build is. The Melrose firm's permitted work is gut renovations, dormers, primary-suite additions and large kitchens, spread across Melrose, Malden, Belmont, Burlington, Arlington, Somerville, Peabody, Danvers and Chestnut Hill.
The company says Geoffrey Shafer founded it in Melrose in 2001 out of his basement after a career in IT, brought design in-house in 2003, and bought its Main Street building and showroom in 2018. Its Better Business Bureau page shows 24 years in business, four employees and an A+ grade, though the firm is not BBB accredited. Its Massachusetts home improvement contractor registration is active.
What customers describe, over and over, is a team you hand a whole project to. A 2023 Houzz reviewer ran through the roster — architect, kitchen designer, project manager, production manager — and another that year described 3-D walkthroughs used to refine plans before anything was built. In April 2026 a homeowner laid out a project that combined a gut remodel of one and a half baths, added headroom to a cramped staircase, and new and refinished hardwood floors. A 2024 customer had a first-floor addition built with a primary bedroom, a large closet, a three-piece bath and a pantry in a tight footprint. In October 2023, a kitchen went down to the studs with an exterior wall moved and the deck rebuilt.
The ratings line up across platforms: 4.9 from 40 on Houzz, 4.8 from 94 on Angi, 4.5 from 15 on Google. Reviewers from the older part of the record valued the paperwork as much as the carpentry — a December 2019 customer described daily progress emails and a clear breakdown of allowances, estimates and change orders, and a January 2019 reviewer said contractors arrived on a schedule shared daily, with no surprises.
Two accounts complicate that, and both are old enough to date. In September 2021 a customer who described a professional, attentive start and an initial estimate range they were comfortable with paid for the design process and left two stars. In a July 2020 Angi review, a customer said everything went well except the kitchen painting, which they thought a two-year-old could have bettered. Design-fee-then-price is the usual friction point in design-build work, so settle the design agreement, the estimate range, and what happens if construction pricing lands above it before you pay for drawings.
Houzz also carries the credentials the firm advertises — 11 Houzz awards, Green Certified Professional and Certified Remodeler, a 2007 EM-NARI CotY gold award for a bath under $30,000, and a listed CSL #84574 — which are the platform's and company's listings rather than a state check.
Houzz puts typical job cost at $50,000 to $500,000-plus. For a kitchen, a primary-suite addition or a whole-floor reconfiguration in the towns north and west of Boston, this is squarely their work; for a single small room, ask early whether it clears their project minimum.