Five trades, one company, one number

Innovation Plus runs five trades out of one company because the properties around here need them. A two family in Lowell needs the unit cleaned between tenants, the hallway floors sanded where thirty years of boots wore through the finish, the siding washed and the porch repainted before it loses another winter, and the front steps reset because frost has pitched them back toward the door. Hire that out separately and you get five quotes, five deposits, five schedules and nobody responsible for the order any of it happens in.

Under one roof, the order becomes part of the plan. Masonry and any carpentry go first. Floors come next, because sanding one throws fine dust onto every surface in the building. Painting follows once that dust is down and the surfaces are dry. Outside, the pressure wash comes after any new mortar has cured and before the first coat of paint or sealer, since neither one bonds well to a wall still carrying pollen and mildew. Cleaning goes last so nobody undoes it. That sequence is written into the scope with everything else, which is the difference between paying for a room once and paying for it twice.

Why we walk the property before we quote it

Nearly every complaint people bring us about their last contractor is a money story. The number went up after the first day, extra hours appeared on the invoice, or the quote quietly assumed the back hall, the basement stairs and the second chimney belonged to somebody else.

A price given over the phone is a guess dressed up as a number, and on masonry it is worse than a guess, because the failure depth in a joint only shows when you put a tool in it. So we come out, at no charge, and look. Then you get one figure and the list it covers, in writing. It only moves if you ask us to add something, or if a wall opens up and shows more than the surface did, and in that case you hear the number before we keep going.

Why the cold changes the method and not the answer

Mortar needs warmth to hydrate, and mortar that freezes before it has cured never gets its strength back. Exterior paint needs a surface warm enough for the film to form. Neither of those stops the work. They change how it gets built.

In the cold we tent and heat the wall, warm the sand and the water, blanket fresh joints until they are hard, and use coatings formulated to cure down near thirty five degrees. That costs more than the same job in June, so you get the winter number and the warm weather number side by side and you choose. Interior painting, flooring, cleaning and post construction run straight through at the normal price. Call in January and you will hear exactly what the cold adds before you sign anything.

Why materials get separated by area

One bucket and one mop head for a whole building is how contamination travels. It is the first thing a health inspector looks for in a food business, and it is the reason an office breakroom can smell faintly of a restroom without anybody being able to say why.

Every zone gets its own cloths, mop heads and bucket, marked and kept apart on the cart. Your staff can see the split when the crew rolls in, which is deliberate. Houses run the same way, because there is no good argument for running them any other way.

Where we work from

We work out of Groton, on the Nashua River in the northwest corner of Middlesex County, and we take work in all six New England states. Close to home the routes run weekly: Pepperell, Ayer, Littleton, Acton, Concord, Westford, Dunstable and Chelmsford sit inside twenty minutes, and Lowell, Lawrence, Andover and the rest of the Merrimack Valley are a short run east. Further out, in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont and Maine, a job is held as a block of days rather than a drop in visit, and we say so up front instead of promising a window we cannot keep. The state and city pages on this site cover where the work actually goes.