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Brady-Built Sunrooms, Auburn, MA, employs between 25 to 35 workers depending on the time of year. Part of the team includes the sunroom designers who work directly with the in-house engineers and architectural department.
The Quality of the Brady-Built Sunroom Product Is Clear As Glass

Auburn, MA—Ever so casually, a passenger gazing out the window of a vehicle traveling along one of the three highways circling Auburn, MA, turns to her partner and blurts out, “Honey, we should add a sunroom to the house.”

The inspiration for such an idea might arise any of up to six days a week during peak season from April through October, when flat bed trailers haul Brady-Built Sunrooms to their destined mooring for installation snug against a house prepared to receive it.

It’s a sight to behold, the glass structure, delivered in one piece, held together by curving eaves and framing in solid Southern Yellow Pine wood that’s been laminated to create just the shape and style desired.

Besides observing the craftsmanship and production process, visitors of Brady-Built Sunrooms discover an efficient and environmentally-conscious operation. First off, the more than 100,000 board feet of lumber ordered annually comes from sawmills that work with tree farms in the Midwest and Southern States, known to replant and not take trees from the wild, to be eco-friendly in every way. The company recycles all sawdust so that none gets thrown out, selling it to companies who use it to manufacture other products or to paper mills. Brady-Built also changed over to using an eco-friendly glue formula, switched to energy efficient light bulbs throughout the factory to save energy, and on the road, combines trips, schedules projects in close proximity, and maintains vehicles in top running condition to limit gas consumption as much as possible.

Brady-Built products are fully customized, and they also have several starting point sunroom style designs to offer clients.
The majority of customers that do succumb to the potential to enjoy an open view of nature from the comfort of their chosen locale in the New England area and beyond, are the empty nesters, followed by many double income childless couples, and thirdly, the commercial market. Conveniently juxtaposed at the nexus of highways 20, 90 and 290, Brady-Built is located two to three miles from several major cities and on the way to the far reaches of the market spread in the north from Portland, MN, south to Pennsylvania and New Jersey and west to New York State.

“Usually we have 12 to 15 completed built-to-order rooms on site awaiting shipment,” said President and General Manager Marco Gabrielli. Larger rooms are shipped in two or more pieces and assembled on-site. Occasionally rooms are shipped in kit form for final assembly at the job site.    

It’s not hard to be sold on the product. It wasn’t for company board member Kevin Kieler. Enthralled with the product after building a room for a Brady-Built board member and adding one on to his own house, he sold his custom home construction business to join the company in 1998. He is one of the five board members that currently run the company. The succession originated with Peter Brady, who founded the company in 1977. Mario Gabrielli, who was running the manufacturing operations, bought the business and assets from Brady in 1999. When Gabrielli passed away in 2010, his son, Marco, succeeded him as president.

Brady-Built Sunrooms absorbed a steady stream of customers until the decline in the building market after 2006 and as of 2012 is seeing its growth pattern turnaround.  “The company has experienced the disadvantages and advantages of going through the economic downturns in a time when others haven’t survived and have gone out of business,” Kieler remarked. “That we made it through is testimony to the quality of the product we build and to the determination of fantastic employees to make it work.”

Brady-Built products are fully customized, and they also have several starting point sunroom style designs to offer clients.
That several employees continue on with the company, some up to 26 years, added Kieler, demonstrates their satisfaction with working conditions and their pride in being associated with the company. “We recognize each person’s talent, reward people for the good job well done, remember birthdays and anniversaries, have cookouts and parties and socialize as a company, take the entire company on fishing trips, have lots of perks other companies have done away with to increase the bottom line. Whereas, we think the best assets are the employees and want to keep them.”

The number of employees fluctuates between 25 to 35 workers, depending on the time of year. Part of the team includes the sunroom designers who work directly with and liaison between the in-house engineers and architectural department. Though the product is fully customized, they have several starting point sunroom style designs to offer clients. The original style that Peter Brady developed was the curved eave style room, followed by the straight eave style, easily adaptable to the many New England Victorian homes, a more hip style and two story model of it, as well as the newest garden style and a branch into conservatories. 

Concurrently, the team works with the customer to blend the chosen design with the look of the house and individual tastes which can veer into unchartered territories, remarked Kieler. “Because of our reputation for unlimited customization capabilities we get wild and crazy jobs no one wants to do. Someone brings a picture and says, ‘Make it look like that,’ or they have a look in mind that other companies they talked to can’t achieve—and we can.”

Recent wood-framed glass enclosures include a record size one—32’ X 66'—built around a pool that other companies wouldn’t attempt, a three-story high enclosed staircase for exposure to sunlight when walking on the stairs, and a building off of a customer’s parent’s living room that became a mammoth exotic bird cage. 

Once lumber is cut to the prescribed sizes, it’s processed through to lamination and beam construction, to assembly and finishing, unique to each job.
If a little partner persuading is needed or customers simply want a firsthand look at the manufacturing process, a company representative arranges a tour for them of the 25,000 square-foot facility where lumber is loaded in at one end of the long production room and finished product is stored at the other end, inside and out, in a 15,000-square-foot area dedicated to storage of completed rooms, separate from the 5,000-square-feet of office space.  

Only No. 1 Select or Better Yellow Pine 2X4’s are used to build frames, which is, affirmed Kieler, “a very durable, terrific wood to laminate with. It’s also a strong wood, and when we laminate it into a beam it can take a tremendous amount of wind, snow load and abuse.” 

The Yellow Pine that arrives, pre-dried to 16 percent moisture content ideal for lamination, is moved within the facility using a 10-ton gantry crane that traverses the entire length of the building. A 5-ton fork truck with extended forks is used to move rooms and room parts inside and outside the factory.

Once lumber is cut to the prescribed sizes, it’s processed through to lamination and beam construction, to assembly and finishing, unique to each job, said Kieler. “The sunroom is customized using impeccable carpentry skills unrivaled in the industry and we are the undisputed king of sunrooms in New England. Putting the components together becomes very specialized and customized with the all glass roof and each room is an individual creation. No two are alike, built with a beautiful signature woodwork finish, joinery, moulding and attention to detail.”

Prospective buyers can feast their eyes on Brady-Built Sunrooms at up to 30 home shows every year throughout New England, Eastern New York State, and Pennsylvania. In accordance with company goals, those options will likely expand into the Mid-Atlantic States where operations had ceased when the economy took a spiral. Recalled Kieler, “We’d closed those operations and concentrated on New England. Now with our increase in growth, we’ll reopen in those areas.” 

Originally the base of the operation was in Worcester. Now, the prominent Brady-Built Sunroom reputation holds firm in Auburn and will spread its sunroom visibility on the highway even further down the road.

Prospective buyers can feast their eyes on Brady-Built Sunrooms at up to 30 home shows every year throughout New England, Eastern New York State, and Pennsylvania.
 For more information visit www.sunroomsbybrady.com.

 
 
 
     
 
 

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