Yes, we serve Greater Albany
Our History
In 1998, I was a small time contractor trying to figure out my path. I grew up in Cohoes, New York and had recently moved to Halfmoon. At the time, I was taking whatever small construction jobs I could find just to keep things going. I had drive and ambition, and I knew how to work hard, but I didn't have a clear direction yet. Like a lot of people starting out, I didn't know what I didn't know.
Then one day a letter showed up in my mailbox. It was from a company in Connecticut called Basement Systems. They were building a national network of contractors specializing in basement waterproofing. Somehow they had found a small classified ad I had squeezed into the back of the local Yellow Pages - the only marketing I could afford at the time. At that point, I knew almost nothing about the industry. Honestly, I thought basement waterproofing meant painting the basement walls with waterproof paint. But the letter talked about something that immediately caught my attention. It described an opportunity to build your own business while helping homeowners solve serious problems with their homes. To someone trying to find his path, it felt like the opportunity of a lifetime. So I called them.
A few days later I borrowed my girlfriend's car because I didn't trust my pickup truck to make the trip and drove to Seymour, Connecticut to meet the founder, Larry Janesky. That lunch meeting changed my life. Larry and I hit it off immediately. We shared a lot of the same mindset and work ethic. By the end of that meeting I had the opportunity to become part of the Basement Systems dealer network. Just a few weeks later I completed my very first basement waterproofing job.
In the beginning, I did everything myself. I ran the leads. I met with homeowners. I designed the solutions. And then I installed the systems. When I needed help installing, I would call friends who were available to work for the day.
Looking back, those were long days. But they were also the days where the foundation of this company was built. I already had a strong background in construction, so learning the systems came naturally. What I didn't know yet was how to build a business. That part came through trial and error. Eventually I realized I couldn't do everything alone.
The first salesman I hired was someone who had influenced my life years earlier. When I was 13 years old, I worked for him as a helper while he renovated a house for his family. I made two dollars an hour sweeping floors, moving materials, and doing whatever else a kid could do. He taught me a lot about construction and about life. Years later, he became my first salesman.
Not long after that, I hired a close friend from high school to help in the office. And when I say "office," I mean the basement of the small 900 square foot house I bought in 2000. That was the headquarters of Adirondack Basement Systems. At the time we had one crew, one salesman, and one office manager. That was the entire company. Work was inconsistent in those early years, but little by little we started gaining traction.
In 2003 an opportunity came up to rent a small office. At the time it felt like a huge step forward. We had a few offices and a reception area, and suddenly we felt like a real company. Our warehouse was a 10 by 30 shed I bought and placed across the street in the parking lot of the hardware store owned by my father in law. It wasn't fancy, but it worked.
As time passed we hired more salespeople, more installers, and more office staff. Before long we had grown to around 10 to 15 employees.
In 2005 another opportunity came up to purchase a building that had previously been used as an electrician's office and warehouse. The upstairs served as offices and the walkout basement became our warehouse. At the time, I thought we had really made it. But the company kept growing. Eventually we simply ran out of space. For years I searched for a place we could call our permanent home. We even had a deal under contract at one point that fell apart when the seller changed the terms at the last minute. I purchased land with the intention of building our own facility, but the reality was that building something large enough for the future simply wasn't financially possible at the time. So we kept working and growing where we were.
In 2017, we rented a 3,000 square foot warehouse about a mile from our office to relieve the pressure of operating out of such a small space. By then we had multiple installation crews, a growing sales team, and several office staff members supporting the operation. The company was growing, but like most growing businesses we had challenges. Employee retention, efficiency, and managing growth were all things we were learning as we went. Still, we stayed focused on a simple principle: Do right by the customer and success will follow.
Three years later, in 2020, a 6,000 square foot warehouse became available two buildings away from the smaller one we were renting. We moved again. And just like every other move we had made, we filled that building faster than we expected. At that point our office staff and sales team were working out of one building while our production crews and warehouse operations were a mile down the road. It wasn't ideal, but we made it work. All the while, I kept searching for a permanent home for the company.
That opportunity finally came when I discovered an old furniture store property in Mechanicville, New York. The property included a two story showroom building and a large warehouse. Part of the warehouse was a metal building built in the 1990s, and another section was an old brick railroad freight terminal dating back to the early 1900s. The buildings had been empty for years and were showing their age. But I loved it the moment I saw it. The scale of the project was intimidating. The renovations required were massive, and the financial investment was enough to make anyone nervous. A lot of people thought I was crazy. But I saw something they didn't. I saw a home for this company. A place with character, history, and room to grow in a community that would welcome us. So we bought it.
Construction began, and after years of dreaming about what that place could become, we opened the doors to our new headquarters on March 1, 2024. For me, that day represented decades of work, risk, and persistence.
Adirondack Basement Systems may have started with me, but it was never built by just one person.
It has been built by an incredible team of people who believed in what we were trying to do.
Today our company is guided by what we call our MVPs.
Our Mission: Impact lives by exceeding expectations.
Our Values:
Our Purpose: Redefine the industry.
Those ideas didn't come from a marketing meeting. They came from real experiences working with homeowners and building a team that believes in doing things the right way.
Over the years our industry has changed. Many companies have been bought by large investment groups and are run by corporations far removed from the communities they serve. Adirondack Basement Systems is different.
We are a locally built company. Our team lives here. Our families live here. The homeowners we serve are our neighbors. That perspective matters. Because when someone invites you into their home to solve a problem, you treat that responsibility differently.
We believe homeowners deserve a company that values craftsmanship, honesty, and long-term relationships.
We believe employees deserve a place where their work matters and where they can build meaningful careers.
And we believe this industry can always be better than it was yesterday.
When I drove to Connecticut in a borrowed car back in 1998, I never imagined what this company would become.
Today Adirondack Basement Systems has grown beyond anything I thought possible in those early years.
But the truth is, we are just getting started. And the best chapters of this story are still ahead.
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