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Press
HOLIDAY WARMTH By LANE LAMBERT Angels have different names and do different things. For one Quincy grandmother, the angel turned out to be a Scituate contractor named Ed, who provided a badly needed furnace repair. Ann, husband Joe and their two grandchildren were profiled in a Nov. 25 Lend a Hand story. Ann and Joe are permanent guardians for 2-year-old Carly and 6-year old Brian, whose mother is a recovering drug addict. They never thought twice about taking in the youngsters, even though it meant losing Ann’s income as a waitress. She had to stay home to look after the children. Joe is a custodian and the children have Mass Health coverage, but the family budget is tight. When their natural-gas furnace began to falter, Ann spent numerous sleepless nights worrying how they would pay for a new one. Minot Light Builders owner Ed Walsh read of the family’s plight. He thought about his own 2-year-old twins and his parents, who recently celebrated their 50th anniversary. “This could happen to anybody,” Walsh said. So he offered to install a new furnace for free. When Walsh and Quincy Community Action Programs called to schedule the work, Ann was overwhelmed. “For him to do this for someone he doesn’t even know – he has no idea how much this means,” Ann said. Ann actually had two angels. The other was Keith Eaton, Walsh’s heating-system contractor. They checked the furnace – an oil burner converted to natural gas – and found the unit was in pretty good shape. All it needed was a new oil burner and new fuel lines to make it more efficient and save the family hundreds of dollars in utility bills. They finished the conversion last week, complete with an extra gift – a new oil tank, which was filled by Scudder Fuels. “I feel like the luckiest person in the world,” Ann said. “This will be the best Christmas ever.” “Everybody deserves a break,” Walsh said. “They’re the real heroes.” Article written in the Tiny Town Gazette Big or small...Minot Light builds it all You may not be planning to build a bridge or a 10 theater multiplex, but if you were, you’d want Ed Walsh on the job. Minot Light Builders is a quaint name for a company whose president earned a degree in engineering from Wentworth, and began the early part of his career as a Project Manager and Project Superintendent working for major companies on commercial projects. One of those projects, ‘a rush job’ was a 10 theater, 32,000 sq. ft. multiplex in upstate New York. Ed said “We had structural steel delivered to the site in February and on the very same day the owner called and begged us to do “what we had to do” to complete the project by Memorial Day that same year. This call was due to Paramount Pictures requesting to make its debut of Jurassic Park II at this theater. It was a real challenge. We ran three shifts for four months and we beat the deadline - completing the project 90 days ahead of its scheduled completion date . As a token of the owner’s appreciation I was given tickets and the best seat in the house for the grand opening.” Ed says he always knew he’d get back into the residential and small commercial end of building because “it’s more fun and it’s more creative. Homeowners have a vested interest in what we do. They come home from work each day eager to see the progress and changes from the day before. “Some projects start with an architect, many more begin on a paper napkin.” Ed recently completed a residential job in Duxbury which began as an addition of a master bathroom and ended up as a major home renovation. In the beginning stages of construction, Ed noticed that the master bedroom didn’t have that much light. So they redesigned the roof and lowered the bedroom wall a couple of feet and put two skylights in the bathroom, and two in the bedroom, providing natural light for both rooms. Ed notes that this project was accomplished without an architect. “I supervise and do some of the work on every job. In order to be effective you need to realize when you are filling employee shoes and when you are filling owner shoes. There’s value in supervision. The workmen need direction and a clear path to follow. When projects aren’t supervised, the homeowner ends up with misinterpreted plans, work being performed out of sequence, partitions in wrong places, doors with wrong swings, items that may seem minor in the big picture, but they can cause considerable delays to a construction Ed says Minot Light Builders gives every project the attention it deserves, regardless of the size.
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