How Level Two Chimney Boston Was Born in Boston
Corrine Halstead didn’t move to Boston to build a chimney company. She moved here for the same reason a lot of people do: the neighborhoods felt real, the housing stock was old and beautiful, and the winters made you earn it. What she found once she got here was a city full of homeowners who cared deeply about their houses and had almost no way to know what was actually happening inside their chimneys. They were getting quotes for work they couldn’t see, from companies that never showed them proof. Many had been burned before, literally and figuratively.
The tipping point came when a homeowner in Milton showed Corrine a quote from another company for a full liner replacement, nearly five thousand dollars of work, based on nothing more than a flashlight glance up the flue. The homeowner was scared, the price was enormous, and nobody had put a camera in the chimney. Corrine knew then that bringing Level Two Chimney Co. to Boston wasn’t just a business opportunity. It was the right thing to do. Boston deserved a chimney company that showed its work.
So in 2023, she did it. She opened Level Two Chimney Boston as an independently owned and operated branch of Level Two Chimney Co., bringing the Haven Standard to every job from Quincy to Winchester. The promise from day one: a written price before anything starts, and photographic proof when it’s done. No guesswork. No fear-selling. Just evidence.
Corrine Halstead’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
Corrine got into chimney work the way a lot of people find the thing they’re meant to do: sideways. She was working property maintenance in her early twenties, the kind of job where you learn a little about a lot and a lot about what you don’t know. One winter, a landlord asked her to look at a fireplace that was smoking back into the living room. She climbed up on the roof, pulled the cap off, and looked down. What she saw stopped her.
The flue was nearly closed off. Not with soot, but with a dense, crusty glaze that had been building for years. It smelled sharp and acrid, like burned tar. She didn’t know what it was then, but she learned fast: stage three creosote, the kind that ignites. The homeowner had been using that fireplace every weekend, completely unaware.
That moment rewired something. Not the danger itself, but the invisibility of it. Nobody had looked. For years, people had burned wood in that fireplace and never once had someone actually inspect what was accumulating above them. Corrine wanted to be the person who looked.
She started training with an experienced sweep, learning the trade from the inside out. She learned to read soot texture with her fingers, to hear the difference between a flue that’s drafting and one that’s struggling, to respect a chimney as a system rather than a hole in the roof. More than a decade later, she still gets the same feeling standing at the top of a roof in Dorchester or Cambridge, looking down a flue with a camera and seeing exactly what’s there. It’s the feeling of being useful in a way that matters. If she weren’t doing this, she’d probably still be up on roofs somewhere, because that’s the part she loves.
Meet Corrine Halstead - The Person Behind Every Job
Corrine Halstead is the Owner & Founder of Level Two Chimney Boston. She leads a local team of trained technicians who work under her direct supervision, and she’s the person who sets the tone for how this branch operates. Her background is in field work, not sales. She came up through the trade the hard way, learning on roofs and in crawl spaces, and her team follows the same path. Every technician working under the Level Two Chimney Boston name is required to hold the license and insurance Massachusetts requires, and Corrine personally reviews the camera footage from every inspection before it goes to a homeowner.
What separates her from a corporate franchise technician is simple: she lives in the service area. She knows what a Newton chimney faces in a wet spring and what thirty years of New England winters do to a crown in Quincy. She’s not visiting Boston. She’s here. When she’s not working, she’s restoring a 1920s foursquare in Milton, slowly, one room at a time. That old house is why she understands what homeowners feel when someone tells them they need expensive work. She wants the proof before she opens her wallet, and she assumes her customers do too. That’s not a policy. That’s who she is.
Before
AfterOur Promise to Boston Homeowners
We put every price in writing before a single brush goes up the flue. That’s Clause 1 of the Haven Standard: Have it in writing. You’ll know the flat price, the scope, and the warranty before anyone starts, and nobody will try to upsell you at the door. We don’t do that. Not in Boston, not anywhere.
We show you what we found. Clause 4 of the Haven Standard is Evidence on every job. After every camera inspection, you get photos and readings that document the actual condition of your flue. If we say a liner is cracked, you’ll see the crack. If the flue is clean, you’ll see that too. We’d rather lose a job than recommend work a homeowner can’t verify. That’s the standard Level Two was built on, and it’s the standard we work to on every job from Wakefield to Norwood.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed: Every pro working under the Level Two Chimney Boston name is required to hold the license Massachusetts requires for chimney work. We don’t ask you to take our word for it. Ask to see it.
- Insured & bonded: Same standard. Required, not optional. If someone is working on your roof, you should know they’re covered if something goes wrong.
- Local experience: Corrine has worked in chimneys for over a decade, and this branch has served the Boston area since 2023. That’s local experience with New England weather, not experience imported from another climate.
- Camera-inspected, evidence-backed: Every inspection is a Level 2 inspection under NFPA 211, which means a camera goes down the flue. The footage is archived, so you have a documented record of your chimney’s condition over time.
- Strong local reputation: We’re a newer branch in Boston, and we’re building our name the same way the parent company did: by doing honest work and showing proof of it.
Here’s why these matter to you. A licensed and insured contractor protects you legally and financially if something goes wrong. But the camera archive matters more than any piece of paper. When you have footage of your flue from last year and this year, nobody can sell you a repair you don’t need. That kind of documentation is the difference between trusting someone and believing them.
Rooted in Boston
We work in every neighborhood from Dorchester to Back Bay, from the triple-deckers of Quincy to the colonials of Winchester. Boston’s chimneys are old, built for coal and retrofitted for oil and gas, and they need someone who knows what forty years of New England weather does to brick and mortar. We’re here because this is where the houses are. We’re here because this is home. The weather comes hard off the harbor, the freeze-thaw cycles are brutal, and a chimney that’s fine in a dry climate can be a liability here. We know that because we live in it.
Written by Corrine Halstead, Owner at Level Two Chimney Boston, serving the Boston area since 2023.