Greater Lansing

Water damage repair

Thirteen of the jobs on eleven months of invoices are the aftermath of water rather than the leak that caused it. Here is what gets repaired, what has to come out instead, and why nothing starts until a meter says the wall is dry.

What is actually wrong

There are two jobs here and this page is the second one. Finding the water and stopping it is plumbing — tracing, shut-offs, extraction — and it lives on the leaks page. This page is what the water ruined: the ceiling that came down, the drywall that went brown through the paper, the insulation holding water inside a wall cavity, the subfloor that gives underfoot, the baseboard, the cabinet, the paint. Most people arrive here a week or two after the event, with the leak fixed and a hole in the house.

The sentence that decides whether any of it holds is this: you cannot put a house back while it is still wet, and dry to the hand is not dry. Gypsum wicks water upward well past the line you can see, and the back of a board, the cavity behind it and the bottom plate under it all dry long after the painted face feels fine. So the first thing that happens on a water job here is a moisture meter against the material and against a dry part of the same wall for comparison, and the reading goes on the paperwork. Closing a wall over wet framing buys you a second repair with mold in it.

Water also goes further than its stain. It runs along the top of a joist and comes through a ceiling well away from where it started, it tracks down the back of drywall without marking the front, and it collects in the lowest thing in the room. The visible damage is where the water left; it is not the map of where the water went.

And some of this does not get repaired at all — it gets removed, and which it is depends on what the water was. Clean water from a supply line is the best case. Water out of a washing machine, a dishwasher or a shower trap is not clean, and anything that has been standing a few days has stopped being clean whatever it started as. Sewage or water that came in off the ground is a different category again: porous material it touched is a loss, not a drying problem, and no amount of air moving will make it something you want in a bedroom wall.

Where this stops

When it is not a handyman job

This is at the top of the page rather than the bottom because getting it wrong costs you a wasted visit. Insured, and no contractor license is claimed or implied — the Michigan residential builder license is not held.

Mold: inspection and surface treatment only. Remediation is referred to a licensed specialist, and that is this company’s own wording on its own invoices rather than a website hedge. If what you have is a mold problem rather than a water problem, you will be told that plainly and it will not be absorbed into a drywall quote.
This is not an emergency callout service. There is no out-of-hours crew, no board-up and no extraction truck; hours are Monday to Friday. If water is running right now, ring a restoration company that does keep a night number, and then ring us for the repair. We would rather say that than take the call and be the reason nobody came.
Sewage, and anything that has come in off the ground or been standing, is cleaned up here but not saved — porous material goes out. Where the volume or the contamination is past what a handyman company should be touching, it is named and referred.
We are not an insurance restoration contractor. We do not bill your insurer and we do not negotiate with an adjuster. What you get is an itemized fixed price in writing, set out line by line, which you are free to hand to them — and in practice that is a more useful document than an estimate written to a claim.
No structural work and no re-framing. If a joist or a header has lost its strength, that is past this company and goes to a licensed trade with it named on the paperwork.
The leak itself — finding it, stopping it, replacing the valve or the trap — is the other half of this and lives on the leaks and flooding page. A roof or a gutter discharging against the wall is a roofer’s, and saying so costs you nothing.
Cupped or buckled hardwood is a flooring specialist’s judgment on whether it can be sanded flat or has to come up. We will give you our honest read and then get the right person to confirm it.

The work itself

What actually gets done

Water-damaged ceilings taken down back to sound board, replaced, taped and finished in three coats — and the texture matched where there is one.

Drywall cut back above the waterline to the nearest stud or joist rather than to the edge of the stain, so a new joint lands on framing instead of in mid-air.

Soaked batt insulation pulled out and replaced. It does not dry in place inside a closed wall, and leaving it is the single most common reason a repaired wall smells six months later.

Subfloor: soft or delaminated sections cut out, the joists underneath checked and reinforced where they need it, and new tongue-and-groove down.

Baseboard, casing, door bottoms and closet shelving renewed where water has swelled the ends.

Cabinets and vanities — an honest look at which carcass is salvageable and which has turned to porridge at the toe kick.

Basement clean-up, haul-away of what cannot be saved, and surface treatment of what stays.

A stain-blocking primer before paint. A water stain bleeds back through ordinary wall paint within weeks, every time, and the number of coats makes no difference.

A moisture reading taken before anything closes up, with the number written down rather than described.

This work sits inside General Repairs, which carries the invoiced price bands for the trade with the sample size printed beside every figure.

What it costs

There is no price list for this, and here is what actually decides the number.

The same three words describe a twenty-minute job and a two-day one. Rather than publish a figure that is wrong for one of them, here is what moves it — so you can work out roughly which end of it you are at before anybody comes out.

Whether the water has actually stopped, and whether anybody knows where it came from. Repairing a ceiling under a live leak is work done twice.

How long it ran before anybody noticed. A burst line found in twenty minutes and a slow weep behind a vanity found in March are the same volume of water and nothing like the same job.

Which category of water it was, because that decides what gets dried and what gets carried out to the skip.

How far it traveled, which is usually further than the stain and is established with a meter rather than by eye.

Whether it is drywall only, or drywall plus insulation, plus subfloor, plus a cabinet run.

Ceiling or wall. A ceiling is overhead work, it needs the room cleared, and it is slower.

Texture and paint. A repair in a textured, painted plane means the plane gets refinished, not the patch — which surprises people and is better said now.

Occupied or empty, and how much furniture has to move before anybody can work.

How to get a real number

Somebody comes out, looks at it properly, and you get a fixed price in writing with the work set out line by line and the exclusions written down as plainly as the inclusions. Coming out to do that is not charged for, and neither is working out what is wrong. If something is found once a wall or a floor is open, it is priced as a written change order and you decide before the work carries on rather than after it is billed. Materials are supplied at cost with the receipt attached, first-time customers get 10% off labor, and labor carries a one-year craftsmanship warranty.

If this is happening right now

What to do in the next five minutes, and what happens when you ring.

Before anybody arrives

Photograph it wet, and photograph more than you think you need — including the rooms the water did not reach. By the time anybody arrives, and certainly by the time an adjuster does, the evidence has dried and the argument gets harder.
Get air moving and keep it moving. A dehumidifier and a couple of fans running for a week does more to keep the repair bill down than anything else available to you.
Do not close it up. A hole in a ceiling or a removed baseboard is ugly and it is also the only thing letting that cavity dry. Resist the urge to tidy.
Take the baseboard off rather than leaving it on. It holds water against the bottom of the board and the bottom of the board is where the damage finishes.
Do not paint the stain. It will come back through, and the primer that would have stopped it now has to go over fresh paint.
If the water was sewage or came in from outside, treat everything porous it touched as a loss and stop trying to save it.
If water is anywhere near an outlet, a light fitting or a panel, turn that circuit off at the breaker and leave it alone.

Call the business line

(517) 505-7135

Answered Monday to Friday, 08:00 to 18:00. There is no out-of-hours line and this page is not going to invent one — outside those hours, leave a message with the address and what is happening, and it is picked up in the morning.

On the call you get asked what is happening, what else in the building is affected, and whether it is still getting worse. That is how it gets decided whether this is our job at all — and if it is not, you get told that on the phone rather than after somebody has driven out.

No trip charge
No call-out fee or minimum
No diagnostic fee
No charge for a return visit

True across all 84 written quotes this company has issued. Most contractors in this market charge to turn up.

Or send the details

When the right answer is not this company

You can smell gas: Leave the building and call the utility from outside. Not us, and not later.
Water you cannot stop: Your main shut-off first, then a licensed plumber. Every minute of this one costs money.
Sewage backing up, or several fixtures at once: A licensed plumber with a camera. That is the shared line, not a fixture, and a cable down one sink will not touch it.
Sparking, scorching or a burning smell at an outlet or a panel: Breaker off, and a licensed electrician. Electrical work here is repair and like-for-like replacement, and this is neither.
No heat, or heating and cooling equipment that has failed: A licensed mechanical contractor. That trade is not offered here at all, and knowing that in one phone call is worth more than a visit.

Questions people actually ask

How long do I have to wait before the repair can start?

Until the material is dry, and that is a reading rather than a feeling. A small ceiling patch on clean water with fans on it is often a few days; a wall with wet insulation inside it, or a subfloor, can be a week or two. We measure against a dry part of the same wall for comparison, write the number down, and start when it says so. Starting early is the one shortcut on this job that always costs more than it saves, because the repair has to come back off.

Will you cut the drywall back further than the stain?

Yes, and that is deliberate rather than upselling. Gypsum wicks water upward past the line you can see and the back of the board is wetter than the face, so a cut at the edge of the stain leaves damaged board in the wall. The cut goes above the waterline and across to the nearest stud or joist, because a new joint needs framing behind it to land on. If insulation is behind it and the insulation is wet, that comes out too — it does not dry inside a closed wall.

Can I just paint over a water stain?

Not with wall paint. A water stain is a dissolved mineral and tannin deposit and it travels back through ordinary paint within weeks however many coats go on. The surface has to be sound, dry and sealed with a stain-blocking primer first, and then it holds. Whether the board underneath is sound enough to be sealed rather than cut out is a separate question, and there is a whole article on how to tell.

Do you work with my insurance company?

Not as a claim handler. This company is not an insurance restoration contractor, does not bill insurers and does not negotiate with adjusters. What it gives you is an itemized fixed-price quote in writing with the exclusions written down, which you can hand straight to your adjuster — and homeowners generally find that document easier to get agreed than a restoration estimate, because every line is a thing somebody is going to do for a stated price.

There is mold. Is that still a job you take?

Partly, and the line is the same one that is printed on this company’s invoices: inspection and surface treatment only, with remediation referred to a licensed specialist. Surface growth on a sound, dry wall that is coming out anyway is ordinary repair work. Growth behind a wall, through insulation, or over any real area is a specialist’s job with containment and air monitoring, and pretending otherwise would be selling you a cosmetic fix over a health problem.

Can somebody come out today? There is water coming through the ceiling.

If water is actively running, the first calls are your main shut-off and a company that keeps a night number — this one does not, and the hours here are Monday to Friday. Saying so is more use to you than booking a visit for tomorrow. Once it has stopped, this is exactly the work on this page, and coming out to look at it is free with no trip charge.

What does water damage repair cost?

There is no rate card for it, because the same stain can be an afternoon or a fortnight depending on what is behind it. It is set by whether the water has stopped, how long it ran, which category of water it was, how far it actually traveled, and whether the job is drywall only or drywall plus insulation, subfloor and cabinets. Somebody comes out, takes readings, and puts a fixed price in writing with the exclusions on it. Coming out is not charged for.

Do you work in Lansing, Haslett, East Lansing, Okemos and Holt?

Yes — Greater Lansing and the towns around it, which is where almost all of this company’s work is.

Book your water damage repair

Send photographs of the damage — and of it wet, if you still have them — and say roughly when the water happened and whether it has stopped. Somebody comes out, takes moisture readings, and you get a fixed price in writing before anything starts. Coming out is free, and there is no trip charge.

Get a Free Quote Call (517) 505-7135