When water leaks inside your house, the first step is to identify the source of the leak, and fix that. We don’t do that part; you’ll first need to call a licensed plumber, roofer, or appliance repair-person.

Once the leak is fixed, air everything out, to avoid mold, mildew and other damage. Run fans, dehumidifiers, and/or space heaters to speed up the drying process. Open windows, weather permitting. After things have dried, we can complete the remediation work for cabinets, trim, flooring, walls, and ceilings.

The good news is that many modern construction materials can survive water contact. For instance, most solid wood materials will survive short-term water contact, as wood is made to suck up moisture. Similarly, plaster and drywall are designed to be patched up.

Unfortunately, some common building materials—such as particle-board, MDF, and the like—tend to damage easily from water contact, and often have to be replaced. Such materials are often found in cabinetry, shelving, trim, and inexpensive flooring.

Often, your damage will include drywall/plaster walls and ceilings, including damage where plumbers had to cut into the walls and ceilings. Repair requires multiple steps, typically over multiple days:

• scraping out the most damaged material

• taping in new pieces of drywall as needed

• filling in gaps with joint compound/drywall tape

• drying

• scraping

• sanding

• priming

• drying

• painting.

Depending on the extent of the damage, some of these steps may need to be repeated.

There is a huge difference in skill and quality between experienced and inexperienced drywall workers, and you’ll notice if they rush one of these steps. Rushed work will end up looking like, well, someone obviously patched a hole in the wall and painted over it. Quality work should be invisible from a couple arm-lengths away.

Finally, it’s time to repaint. We can provide matching paint, if needed. Most of the time, we don’t advise to simply repaint only the section where the repair was made. Paint on the wall has changed color over time, so a section of new paint on a wall of old paint will stand out. To make the repair look professional, the entire the damaged surface has to be repainted.