Presto Painting

Presto Painting has been the painting outfit North Shore homeowners call since 1988 — a family-owned Swampscott company still run day to day by owner Costa Makris, who oversees every job personally. Its stated territory runs from Marblehead and Swampscott through Salem and into Boston. The clearest recent read on their work comes from a single detailed account: a homeowner who calls Costa's crew "outstanding painters" who are also, in their words, "lovely human beings" — kind, respectful, and meticulous about cleanup, leaving rooms and restrooms immaculate at the end of each day. The same reviewer notes the crew worked around a family medical emergency without losing stride, the kind of flexibility that's hard to fake. That's the extent of the public reviews right now, though. The Better Business Bureau and Angi both list Presto as accredited but show zero customer reviews on file, despite the company having held its A+ BBB rating since 2007. It's a business with a long history and no record of complaints anywhere it's listed, but not yet a deep bench of independent reviews to lean on. What is verifiable is the paperwork: Presto's Massachusetts Home Improvement Contractor license is active per the state registry, and the company holds EPA RRP lead-safe certification along with memberships in the Painting Contractors Association, the Building Trades Association, and the North Shore Chamber of Commerce. This is a reasonable call for a homeowner who wants a small, owner-run shop with decades of standing in the same towns rather than a large franchise — just worth asking for a couple of recent references directly, since the public review trail is still thin and most of what's known here comes from the company itself and its BBB standing.