How Level Two Chimney Waltham Was Born in Waltham
We remember the exact afternoon in late 2014 when we knew Waltham needed something different. Corrine Halstead was working a job on Crescent Street, up near Bentley University, and the homeowner, a retired engineer, pulled her aside after the sweep. He’d just paid another company $340 for what they called a “complete inspection.” They’d shined a flashlight up from the firebox, pronounced everything fine, and left a carbon-copy receipt. When Corrine ran the camera, she found a cracked flue tile three feet down, and a bird’s nest in the smoke chamber that had been there long enough to stain the brick. The homeowner sat on his hearth and didn’t say anything for a full minute. Then he asked, “How many other people in Waltham are walking around thinking they’re fine?”
That was the moment. Not anger, not triumph - just the weight of realizing how many fireplaces in this city were being signed off by flashlight. Corrine had already been with Level Two Chimney Co. for several years, working out of their original territory, and she’d watched the brand build its reputation on Clause 4: evidence on every job, camera footage archived, nothing taken on faith. Waltham had the old housing stock, the harsh freeze-thaw cycles, the dense neighborhoods of pre-war colonials and triple-deckers where a chimney fire doesn’t stay contained. What it didn’t have was a local team operating to that standard. Corrine made the case to bring Level Two here, and in early 2015, we opened the Waltham branch with one promise: the inspection that actually looks inside. Not eventually. Not for an upcharge. Every single time.
Corrine Halstead’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
Corrine didn’t stumble into this work. She was pulled into it by the smell of creosote and the particular sound of a wire brush catching on glazed buildup, that scrape that tells you exactly how long someone’s been skipping maintenance. She started in 2009, the same year Level Two was founded, apprenticing under a tradesman in the original territory who’d been sweeping since before NFPA 211 was something people quoted. He was impatient, exacting, and refused to let her touch a roof until she’d spent six months learning to read a flue from the basement up - tracing the smoke path, understanding draft, knowing why a chimney fails before she ever climbed to see it.
The work got into her hands. She can still remember the first time she sent a camera up a flue that looked clean to the eye and found a gap between liner sections that was venting carbon monoxide into a bedroom wall. The homeowner was a young couple in their first house, same age she was then. They’d been sleeping ten feet from it for two winters. That night she called her mother and talked for an hour about what she’d seen, not because it was dramatic but because it was ordinary - this was happening in houses everywhere, and most people had no way to know.
What gets her out of bed now, seventeen years after she started, is the same thing: the chance to show someone what they couldn’t see for themselves. She’d be a terrible retiree. She tried to imagine it once, during a slow February, and couldn’t picture a Tuesday that didn’t involve a roof ladder and a camera tablet. If she weren’t doing this, she’d probably be restoring old houses, something with mortar and patience and evidence you could point to. The work means what it meant then - that someone trustworthy has to go where homeowners can’t, look at what they can’t see, and tell them the truth without making them feel foolish for not knowing.
Meet Corrine Halstead - The Person Behind Every Job
Corrine Halstead is the Owner and Founder of Level Two Chimney Waltham. She holds state licensure for chimney and fireplace work in Massachusetts, carries full insurance and bonding, and has spent her entire career in the field, not in an office. She’s trained directly under veteran sweeps who taught her to read a chimney the way a carpenter reads grain - by signs that don’t show up in any manual.
What separates Corrine from a corporate franchise technician is simple: she’s the one who answers when something goes wrong. Not a regional manager, not a customer service line. She lives in the service area, drives the same roads her customers drive, and has a personal stake in whether the work holds up. On weekends, she’s usually restoring an antique tool collection she’s been building since her apprenticeship - hand-forged pokers and tongs from the 1800s, the kind of craft that reminds her why functional objects should last. Her commitment to every customer is direct: if she wouldn’t sign off on it in her own mother’s house, she won’t sign off on it in yours.
Before
AfterOur Promise to Waltham Homeowners
We operate under the Haven Standard, and we don’t treat it as decoration.
Have it in writing. Every job starts with a flat price, a written scope, and a written warranty. Corrine learned early that the worst calls come from customers who were told one thing and charged another. Our policy is simple: nothing starts until you’ve seen the number in writing. Clause 1.
Evidence on every job. We use Gelco and Olympia Chimney equipment for our camera inspections, and every customer receives their footage and photos in a documented record. Not a checklist. Not a verbal summary. Actual images of what we found, with readings where they matter. Clause 4.
No surprises. We don’t do door upsells. If we find something that needs addressing, we show you the camera evidence, explain the range of options, and let you decide. We’ve had homeowners in the Warrendale neighborhood choose to wait a season on non-urgent liner work, and we’ve helped them plan for it. That’s the point - you decide with information, not pressure.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed chimney and fireplace contractor in Massachusetts
- Insured & bonded for residential work
- Years of local experience serving Waltham and surrounding communities since 2015
- Strong local reputation built on documented work and customer referrals
These credentials matter because chimney work happens inside your home, on your roof, and in the structure that keeps your family warm. A state license means Corrine has met Massachusetts requirements for technical knowledge and accountability. Insurance and bonding protect you if something goes wrong - a damaged roof, an accident on your property, a dispute over workmanship. And local experience means we’ve swept chimneys in the specific conditions Waltham throws at them: the hard water that accelerates masonry decay, the nor’easters that test flashing, the freeze-thaw cycles that open cracks a southern sweep wouldn’t anticipate. When you hire someone to work on the system that vents your fireplace or heating appliance, you’re trusting them with more than brick. You’re trusting them to know what this climate does to it.
Rooted in Waltham
We’re not tourists here. Corrine lives in this area, and our trucks cover the same streets weekly - from the triple-deckers near Moody Street to the larger homes off Trapelo Road, from the veterans’ posts to the old mills converted to condos. We’ve worked on chimneys in the South Side, in the Warrendale neighborhood, near the Charles River bends where the wind hits differently. We know which blocks have the 1920s construction with the original unlined flues, and which developments put in zero-clearance fireplaces that need a different inspection approach entirely. Level Two Chimney Co. sets the standard we work to; Waltham is the place we apply it.
Written by Corrine Halstead, Owner at Level Two Chimney Waltham, serving Waltham since 2015.