BERLIN – Driving down Deming Road your eyes will most-likely be drawn to Artisan Building & Remodeling’s freshly painted and remodeled black brick building and bright red roof paneling.
“Everybody who has seen this building over the past five-10 years knows it literally just sat here, there were no more than two cars in the parking lot,” said Chris Edge, economic development director. “This wonderful family has helped to not just change the look of this building but feel of the building.”
Artisan Building & Remodeling, founded and owned by Brandon Buchanan, helps residential and commercial owners with roofing and siding problems.
“We started in October of 2017 doing a little bit of everything from bathroom, kitchen, roofing, siding and some interior and exterior work,” Buchanan said. “Then in 2019 we found our niche and switched our services to exterior service only specifically roofing, siding, gutters, windows and doors.”
The town held a ribbon cutting to officially welcome the company to their new location at 230 Deming Rd.
“We were on the Berlin Turnpike renting from another contractor for a few years,” Buchanan said. “We were roughly in a 1,000 square foot building really crammed in there with about nine employees and now here we are.”
Buchanan started the process to buy the new building in February of 2021.
“It was a really long-winded process before we closed on the building on Christmas Eve of 2021,” Buchanan said. “It was a huge transition for us as a company as a whole mainly because of workable space and it also allowed us to expand big time.”
The team got to work transforming the 8,000 total square foot space and began working out of the building around January 1 of 2022.
“We’ve grown year after year and it’s not just a ‘me’ effort, it’s a ‘we’ effort,” Buchanan said. “And we’re happy to be here in Berlin. We’ve grown in size as far as gross, in terms of sales as a business, and people doubled each year since we’ve been in business. And now we have 20 employees.”
Buchanan grew up in Cromwell and attended Cromwell High School. He entered the carpentry field in 2009. He founded and started Artisan Building & Remodeling from the ground up.
“I decided to get into this because I got into the trades right out of high school, college just wasn’t for me,” Buchanan said. “I tried out pretty much every trade that was out there and I found my passion in construction.”
Buchanan had one last message mainly for kids in high school trying to find their path.
“Don’t judge a book by its cover, you don’t have to follow the equation that society tells us you have to follow,” Buchanan said. “I know if I could go back to high school I wouldn’t pursue all the college courses, I would have dived right into the trade off jump street because there’s a lot of money to be made in trades, there’s also a whole awesome life style that I think the stigma of construction specifically roofing needs to come to an end because we’re changing people’s lives and I’m not just talking money, I’m talking lifestyles.”
Artisan Building & Remodeling is open Monday-Saturday 8 a.m.-5 p.m.
They can be reached at 860-759-8617 or email Buchanan at brandon@artisanroofingct.com. They can be found on their website at artisanroofingct.com.