With our pollen, mosquitoes, and tropical storms, what the backyard enthusiast could really use is a sunroom – not just any sunroom, but the Eze-Breeze Room® by Southern Exposure Sunrooms®. This custom designed, custom built room sports dual vinyl and screen windows so you can let the weather in some days and keep it out on others. While the company offers an attractive four season Naturespace® sunroom in durable, insulated glass, the Eze-Breeze® system is a bestseller.

“We’re the first to pioneer customized sunrooms,” company partner Peter Murray attests. “Other companies offer kits with wooden frame construction. Our design is very different.” Pointing to the bone structure of a model in the company’s showroom off Market Street, designer Scott Fitzgerald explains: “We use aluminum extrusions manufactured just for us in our plant in Lexington, North Carolina. This allows us to fit as much window space into a room as possible. Aluminum is strong and flexible so we can do whatever the customer wants with a window. We can even make arches.” In photographs of the company’s work, sunrooms melt into each house as if they had been there the day each home was built. Some are converted screened porches. Some are solariums. Some boast hot tubs while others house dining room tables and space for families to gather.

The Naturespace® sunroom features glass windows that meet or exceed local wind code for inland and barrier island wind velocity. “That means those windows will withstand a strong category three hurricane,” Murray smiles. In the Eze-Breeze ® system, each vinyl window is shatterproof. “The poly-vinyl window is a memory window,” Murray contends. “You can stretch it up to one foot and it will return to its natural state within seconds. It’s hugely popular on golf courses.”

When John Hickey and his brother-in-law, Ed Vogelsong took command of Southern Exposure Sunrooms® in 2005, they grew its revenue by 60 percent. Such expansion is no small feat in the wild economic weather of a recession. While competitors cut staff back during the economic downturn, leadership with this company refused to let their crewmembers go. “We’d rather pay the good workers to stick around,” Murray declares. “These guys are just the very best at what they do.”

Murray and Fitzgerald also take enormous pride in their company’s outstanding level of customer service. “I’d say 90 percent of our business comes from word of mouth,” Murray claims. “We’ve got to impress these folks the first time around. We’re fair. We do what we say we’re going to do – and we offer such a high level of experience.” Although Southern Exposure Sunrooms® is a small company, it boasts college educated general management and an average 17 years construction experience under the belts of crewmembers.

While the company completes 400 to 500 sunrooms a year, it must win new markets to survive. “Once you have a sunroom,” Murray concedes, “you’re probably not likely to need another one anytime soon. So we’ve got to find those new markets.” With the exciting technology that makes these sunroom windows and their flexible framework possible, it is easy to imagine a world of markets opening up to a company this well positioned.

Keep a weather eye on Southern Exposure Sunrooms®. The company is serving customers beyond the Wilmington area, building in Fayetteville, Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Charlotte and Myrtle Beach. Their superb craftsmanship has won recognition with the National Sunroom Association. They provide outstanding world-class service that outshines competition. If you decide your screened porch could be better, give them a call. “You’ll get a true estimate on that first visit,” Fitzgerald pledges. “That’s it – only one visit and we figure it all out. We give you a price and we’ll live by it.”

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The clouds rolled in shortly after John Hickey bought the sunroom business five years ago, when its sole supplier of windows and frames went belly up. With no other alternative in sight, he set up facilities to fabricate whatever seemed necessary. “We in essence became a manufacturer,” he said. “We actually build everything. It’s not a kit business; it’s all custom built.”

This has turned out to be a blessing in disguise, since he fits windows and frames into existing porches that have roof supports, columns, or some type of framework, not to mention roof and ceiling heights of varying dimensions. It became not only possible but much more logical to produce each piece of each project according to individual specifications.

“We can maintain the architectural integrity of the house or we can actually enhance the architectural integrity of the house,” he said. “We can build any size; we can make arches; we’re totally flexible.”

The company offers the popular Eze-Breeze screen room that can be closed up or opened all the way, and it also offers an all-glass option using Energy Star glass, which also has a great deal of flexibility for closing and opening windows.

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Southern Exposure Sunrooms has two products that can always insure that your gathering will be a success.  First, the Eze-breeze Screen and Sliding Panel System that maintains the screen porch feel, allowing over 70% ventilation when the weather and elements are nice; and also allows you to close the porch up into a sunroom when you need to.  Secondly, the Naturespace All Season Sunroom, with energy star rated insulated glass that will provide you with unobstructed views of your lawn, pool or garden with all the comforts of any other room in your house.

Southern Exposure Sunrooms is a licensed general contractor that provides award winning craftsmanship using only the highest quality materials.  Our work crews have years of experience and are extremely efficient in all phases of construction and can take care of your detailed requirements (electrical, tile, ceiling, molding) as well.  Many times we will be called upon to build decks or patios around our sunroom enclosures as well.

All of Southern Exposure Sunrooms products are virtually maintenance free and come with a lifetime warranty on materials.  Our company services the southwest corner of North Carolina, from Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill to Fayetteville and Pinehurst, and from Jacksonville and Wilmington down to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  You can view images of many of our projects by going to our website www.southernexposuresunrooms.com; you can contact us from the website, or by calling 919-661-2000.  Also on our website you can view the images of our 2007 National Sunroom Association award winning rooms.  Southern Exposure won all three categories in which we competed, and in total Southern Exposure Sunrooms had seven of the nine finalists.

When you live in paradise, you want to enjoy the view every day of the year. That’s exactly what’s available to the owners of glass rooms and enclosures crafted by Southern Exposure. The company has been custom constructing sunrooms to enhance the coastal lifestyle for more than ten years, and has been recognized by their industry with numerous national awards.

Brothers-in-law John Hickey and Ed Vogelsong purchased the company in 2005 and dedicated themselves to making a good business even better. With extensive backgrounds in differing multi-million dollar businesses, the two manage their business professionally, using all the tools they learned in their previous careers, Hickey said.

“Our crews are very experienced. We’ve had the same team since we started in business,” Hickey said. “They’re efficient, and they’re mindful of the customer.

From the initial inquiry conversation through the end of the project, the customer has a representative to walk them through each step of the process. Free estimates are given, and all design work is done in-house. “Ninety-five percent of the time, we can give a cost estimate in the first conversation,” Hickey said. Even after completion of the project, which usually takes 6-8 weeks, a company representative meets with the home owner to ensure they know how to care for the finished room.

The company is often called upon to provide a sunroom space for a house under construction, but more often they are called after the property owner determines that they aren’t satisfied with their patio or screen porch. “A large part of our business is to take existing screen porches and custom design a more usable room using the existing roof and foundation, even the existing posts, to blend with the architecture of the home,” Hickey said. Because they are general contractors, they handle every phase of the work including all permitting, electrical, concrete, HVAC extension, etc.

They’re also more than willing to work with other contractors if, for example, the home owner prefers to have the original HVAC contractor handle the additional area. All designs are structurally engineered, and work is done with materials and methods that meet or exceed the stringent coastal building codes and wind load requirements. Impact resistant hurricane windows and doors are available.

Southern Exposure’s primary products are the EZE-Breeze® Screen & Sliding Panel Systems and the NatureSpace® All Season Sunrooms.

EzeBreeze® features aluminum framed glass windows and full screens with stackable vinyl panels that slide up and down. They’re particularly popular with people who have existing screen porches, but find that they don’t use them because of pollen, rain and wind. The panels lift out for easy cleaning and have optional tinting to provide shade and privacy. The EZE-Breeze® system offers about 75% ventilation, he said. The room was selected to be in the first green, zero-energy, home built in Brunswick Forest last year.

For people who do not have a sunroom, but would like to add one, a popular choice is the NatureSpace® room which adds living space that’s comfortably heated and cooled, but with the look and feel of an outdoor living area. The aluminum framework makes these rooms virtually maintenance free. The argon gas-insulated glass windows with low E coatings can be up to 72” wide and high to provide unobstructed views of your lawn or garden. The NatureSpace® Sunroom offers 30% ventilation.

Each completed room is a learning experience for the partners. They ask for feedback from their customers in order to ensure that they continually improve their customer service and their custom construction. “We work very hard to make sure our customer is satisfied,” Hickey said. That has resulted in much of their work coming through customer referrals. They’ve even gained new customers by servicing sunrooms they did not build. Of course, their lifetime warranty also helps.

While the company has locations around the state, its Wilmington headquarters concentrates on serving customers in Duplin, Pender, New Hanover and Brunswick Counties. Complete rooms are constructed at their showroom, 6821 Market Street, and can be visited Monday through Saturday. Stop by to see why the National Sunroom Association has consistently awarded its highest honors Southern Exposure Sunrooms. For more information call 910-793-2762 or visit www.southernexposuresunrooms.com.