Ben O’Sullivan-Pierce and Nick Stamos
Title: Owners, Fresh Start Contracting, Belmont
Age: 29 and 30
Experience: 10 years
Ben O’Sullivan-Pierce and Nikolaos “Nick” Stamos have been friends since meeting on the baseball diamond in grade school. They both worked in family-owned construction companies while growing up and into college before deciding to strike out on their own. They started their Belmont-based construction firm Fresh Start in 2006, and today they have 21 employees – and a keen appreciation of how far they’ve come.
Q: How did Fresh Start come about?
A: O’Sullivan-Pierce: I did a summer collegiate entrepreneurs program where they have a college student run a painting franchise for the summer. Nick was my best friend, so we’d talk about that all the time.
Stamos: Then, for my third co-op at Northeastern, instead of doing a co-op, we decided to partner up and do construction and painting.
O’Sullivan-Pierce: We started off doing whatever jobs people would give us. We put our flyers, drove around in my truck estimating jobs together, working together. It was decks, paint jobs, a lot of handyman kind of work and that led to bigger carpentry jobs. We chose the name Fresh Start because it has a nice ring to it when you think about what a construction project should be like on your home. It’s an old home that has a chance for a fresh start. We wanted the name to sound professional, but approachable – like us.
Q: What kind of work do you specialize in?
A: Stamos: We do mostly finish work and managing in-house; we sub out the bulk of the renovation. We manage a tight network of contractors because we generate a lot of business for them. We select the contractor from our network that fits the job that can meet the timeline and price point the client wants.
O’Sullivan-Pierce: We work with a lot of homeowners. We work for people who are going to stay in the house. Anything you would modify in a house you own, that’s what we do. Our best use is for specialized renovations involving multiple contractors. We look at five or six projects a week, or more, but we’re not a good fit for all of them. We’re general contractors, we have a general knowledge of house from the roof down to the foundation. The core of any renovation is the carpenters, lead carpenters, laborers and managers, so that’s what we keep in-house. Most of our work is in or just outside of the Greater Boston area.
Q: A few years ago, everyone had to have granite countertops and cherry cabinets in their kitchen. What are some current trends?
A: O’Sullivan-Pierce: Nobody likes granite or cherry cabinets any more. They want painted white shaker cabinets. We still do some granite, but a lot of countertops now are made out of this cool, recycled material like the recycled concrete countertop Nick just did. Also recycled glass, soapstone and lot of different synthetics. Marble is pretty classic, too, but it’s pricey, and it etches and stains easily.
Another trend is toward energy efficient homes. Solar is in the conversation a lot, as well as Icynene spray foams, high-efficiency heating and cooling systems, ductless air conditioning systems and LED lights. It’s really big. It’s all about cutting that energy bill down. Nobody wants oil any more, period. Also, space is at a premium even more now with property values being so high. The sleeker designs are bigger. We don’t do as many grand, huge cooking centers as we used to.
Q: What was your favorite project so far?
A: O’Sullivan-Pierce: The renovation we recently finished just outside of Harvard Square was great. That was a top-down renovation for a young couple who bought their dream house. The home was built around 1920 and it hadn’t been updated. It needed everything, so we gutted about half of it – we did something to every space in the house. We removed a chimney to open the interior space up and replaced the section above the roof with a fake metal chimney that I had to buy in New York and get the color approved by the Cambridge Historical Society. The inside is really modern and the outside is preserved historically. That was a year-long job. The owners didn’t live in the house for most of it. We were really under the gun for time. The wife had a baby during the renovation. They were really anxious to get in the house.
Favorite Sites For Company Outings:
- Golf outing at Mount Hood in Melrose
- Bowling outing at Jillian’s in Boston
- Paintball outing at Action Paintball in Tewksbury
- Christmas party at Tavern In The Square (Porter Square)
- Fishing outing on Boston Harbor
