Who We Are and How We Recommend
Built on local knowledge and hard questions
We started Massachusetts Cedar Almanac because Massachusetts roofing decisions matter. A roof protects your home from ten months of winter weather and costs more than most renovations. You need someone who knows the trade—not a marketing site built by the contractors themselves.
We have spent years working with homeowners on roofing and siding questions in this region. We talk to people after the work is done, we watch neighborhoods through seasons, and we learn what holds up in a Massachusetts winter. That experience is what we put into the recommendations here.
A contractor's own website will tell you they are excellent at their craft. What matters is whether homeowners five years later still think so.
What we refuse to do
This site carries no advertisements, no sponsored listings, and no contractor who pays us to be here. We do not take money from the people we recommend. We do not sell leads or contact information. And we will never recommend a contractor we have not looked into, no matter how good their pitch sounds.
How we decide what to put here
Every contractor recommendation follows the same path, in this order:
First, we check the basics
Does the contractor hold a valid Massachusetts roofing or siding license? Do they carry the right insurance—both liability and workers' compensation? Can they show us proof, not promises? A contractor who cannot show these on demand is not on this site.
Then we look at their work
We visit homes they have worked on. We look at the installation detail: how they handle flashing, valleys, gutters, corners. We ask the homeowner if the work has held up, if they would hire the same crew again, what took longer than expected. A good crew is distinguishable within hours on a roof.
We ask about their process
Do they do a site inspection before quoting? Do they explain what they are seeing? Can they walk you through the work and why it costs what it does? A contractor who treats the estimate as an educational conversation is not the same as one who just sends a price.
Finally, we check back
We follow up. How do they handle warranty claims? What do they do when a problem shows up? A contractor's character emerges in how they fix something that went wrong, not in how they sell the job in the first place.
One view we changed our mind about
We once thought the lowest bid was a sign you knew how to shop. We learned it was a sign you were about to pay twice as much by hiring a second contractor to fix the first one.
That conversation changed how we read a quote. Price matters—no one has unlimited money. But the lowest price that gets the job done is not the same as the lowest price you find. A bid that seems unreasonably cheap usually means the contractor has skipped a step you will pay for later, or worse, they have miscalculated and will cut corners to recover the loss.
The rules we hold to
Similar to National Roofing Contractors Association's recommended approach, we ask to see proof of liability insurance, workers' compensation coverage and client references before we recommend any roofer, which means a name only reaches this site after it has passed that check.
We will not recommend a contractor for a project type we cannot verify they have actually done. If they say they do cedar siding but have only done vinyl, they are not on this site for cedar work. We do not guess at contractors' capabilities. We stand behind the names here because we have seen the work.
When a contractor we have recommended does poor work, we remove them. We have done this twice. The standard matters more than the relationship with the contractor.