SERVING SOUTHBOROUGH, MASSACHUSETTS
Home additions, ADUs, kitchens, baths, and custom stonework for Southborough homeowners. A town of newer homes now reaching the age where everything original comes due at once.
Southborough is an outlier among the towns we serve, and in a useful way. It is a smaller town, under 10,000 people, sitting at the eastern edge of Worcester County against the Middlesex line. It is also the highest-income community in our service area, roughly 85 percent detached single-family, with a median build year around 1983.
That last number is the important one. Almost everywhere else we work, the defining question is what a century-old house is hiding. In Southborough, most of the housing was built in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, which means the structure and systems are generally sound and the work is predictable. What those houses are facing instead is a different kind of milestone, covered in the next section.
Andrew Mercurio is a fourth-generation builder who came up in masonry and grew ARM Construction into a full general contracting company. He holds Massachusetts Construction Supervisor License #CS-093044, issued in 2011, and the company holds Home Improvement Contractor Registration #153199. Both are active and verifiable through the Commonwealth.
Kitchen and bathroom remodels are the largest share of the work here by a wide margin, for reasons explained below. Home additions do well on Southborough's generous lots, and ADUs and in-law suites are close to ideal here for the same reason.
We also build sunrooms and four season rooms, garage and basement conversions, home remodels, custom masonry and stonework, decks and patios, siding, and flooring. One company, one point of contact, from the first walkthrough to the final inspection.
Here is the thing about a town where most of the housing went up in the same twenty-year window. Everything in those houses was installed at the same time, and it all reaches the end of its service life at roughly the same time too.
Kitchens and baths come first, usually for two reasons at once. The finishes are worn, and the layout belongs to a different era. A 1985 kitchen was designed as a closed room with a doorway to the dining room, and the single most requested change we handle in this town is opening that wall. That is structural work rather than cosmetic, which is why it needs a general contractor holding a Construction Supervisor License rather than a cabinet installer. Our kitchen page covers what removing a load-bearing wall actually involves.
Then the exterior, all at once. Windows, siding, roofing, and decks were installed together and tend to fail together. A pressure treated deck from the late 1980s is well past its expected life, and the ledger connection on a deck of that vintage is worth having somebody look at regardless of what you plan to do with it.
And insulation is usually the quiet opportunity. Houses built before the modern energy code have far less wall and attic insulation than current standards, and a re-side is the cheapest moment in a house's life to fix that.
The upside of all this is predictability. When we open a wall in a house from 1983, we generally find what we expected to find. That is not true in Worcester or Leominster, and it means a Southborough estimate holds better than one on a house from 1890.
The rest of the town is a different story, and it is a good one.
Southborough was incorporated in 1727 and its center has been the town center ever since. The Southborough Center Historic District, listed on the National Register in 2021, runs from the Fay School grounds along Main Street to the railroad crossing east of Latisquama Road, and holds a real range of nineteenth and early twentieth century architecture.
There were mill villages too. Cordaville grew around a textile mill on the lower Sudbury River, built by Milton Sanford, who drew up plans for a full mill village in 1847 and named it after his wife Cordelia. The mill produced blankets during the Civil War, survived a fire in 1855, and was auctioned off in 1928, but dwellings from that village are still in use today. Fayville and Southville have their own histories.
Working on those houses is a different discipline from working on a 1980s colonial. Plaster over lath, framing on irregular spacing, and systems layered in across decades. And because they predate 1978, federal lead-safe work practices apply to renovation, while old vinyl flooring and its black mastic have to be presumed to contain asbestos until testing says otherwise. We do both kinds of work, and we tell you which one you have.
Southborough is a Boston water supply town, and that has shaped it since the 1890s.
The Sudbury Reservoir was built as part of the Greater Boston water supply system, and constructing it flooded a section of Southborough, including land where an East End schoolhouse once stood north of Fayville. The Sudbury Dam, known locally as the Fayville Dam, was completed in 1894 with an earthen embankment 1,800 feet long and a spillway 300 feet wide. The Hultman Aqueduct was tunneled beneath the reservoir in 1939 and 1940. The Sudbury Dam Historic District was listed on the National Register in 1990.
For a homeowner the practical consequences are straightforward. The MWRA controls the reservoir and substantial land around it. And the ordinary Massachusetts Wetlands Protection Act rules apply, meaning work within 100 feet of a wetland resource area or within 200 feet of a perennial stream requires Conservation Commission review. On a town with this much water in it, that catches a fair number of properties, and it is a timeline item worth identifying at the first site visit rather than at permitting.
Whether a given Southborough property is on town sewer or private septic also matters on anything that adds a bedroom, since Massachusetts sizes septic systems by bedroom count under Title 5. That is the first thing we check.
Westborough borders Southborough to the west. Northborough sits to the northwest. We are based in Princeton, and we also work in Worcester, Shrewsbury, Grafton, Holden, Sterling, West Boylston, Boylston, and Leominster.
What Our Customers Say
I can't say enough good things! I needed a small finish job done at the last minute, and Andrew made it happen quickly and without any stress. The craftsmanship was perfect and everything looks amazing. I'm extremely happy and would recommend him to anyone!
Andrew and his team are detail-oriented. They are skilled and helped me understand the process of renovating my kitchen. Fantastic communication & high quality service! I am so lucky to have them and recommend them to anyone! When they built my deck, it was so fast & efficient! Call Andrew, you won't regret it
Andrew replaced a garden window in my kitchen, and a sliding door. He did a meticulous job, and went above and beyond to accommodate some special requests that I had. His attention to detail and willingness to do whatever it took to make me happy didn't go unnoticed. Will definitely use him each and every time!
Here is what Southborough homeowners ask us most. If your question is not here, call us at (774) 249-0221.
A house built in the early 1980s is now over forty years old, which is right at the end of service life for a lot of what went into it originally. Kitchens and bathrooms from that era are the most common starting point, both for function and for layout, since the closed-off kitchen was still standard then. After that come windows, siding, decks, and roofing, all of which were installed at the same time and tend to reach the end together. The good news is that the structure, the framing, and the systems in a house of that age are generally sound, which makes the work predictable in a way that a century-old house never is.
In most cases yes. Since February 2, 2025, Massachusetts allows one accessory dwelling unit by right on lots in single-family zoning districts statewide, up to 900 square feet or half the gross floor area of the main house, whichever is smaller, with no special permit and no zoning hearing. Southborough is largely detached single-family housing on generous lots, which is close to ideal for a detached ADU. The practical questions here are whether the property is on town sewer or private septic, and whether the lot sits near a wetland resource area or MWRA-controlled land around the Sudbury Reservoir.
It shapes the town more than most residents realize. The Sudbury Reservoir was built in the 1890s as part of the Greater Boston water supply system, and it flooded a section of Southborough in the process, including land where an East End schoolhouse once stood. The Sudbury Dam, also called the Fayville Dam, dates to 1894. Today the MWRA controls the reservoir and a good deal of land around it. For a homeowner, the practical effects are wetlands proximity and the ordinary Wetlands Protection Act buffers, which require Conservation Commission review for work within 100 feet of a resource area or 200 feet of a perennial stream.
Yes for most projects. Any addition, structural change, or conversion of unfinished space into living space requires a building permit from the Town of Southborough, along with electrical, plumbing, and mechanical permits depending on scope. Work near wetlands or the reservoir requires Conservation Commission review. The Southborough Center Historic District was listed on the National Register in 2021, and the Sudbury Dam Historic District in 1990, so older properties may involve additional review depending on the designation. ARM Construction handles the permitting and the inspection schedule as part of the project.
ARM Construction & Management Inc
131 Houghton Road
Princeton, MA 01541
(774) 249-0221
Licensed and insured in Massachusetts. MA CSL #CS-093044 | MA HIC Reg. #153199
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