Water damage repair
Repair is the second half of the job. The first half is drying, and closing a wall before the framing behind it is dry is how a plumbing repair becomes a mold problem in the spring.
Nothing gets closed until the readings say so
Framing, subfloor and the bottom plate of a stud wall are checked with a moisture meter against a dry reference elsewhere in the house. Surfaces feel dry long before the material behind them is, and drywall installed over framing that is still holding moisture traps it with nowhere to go.
What usually needs replacing
Carpet padding almost always. Drywall that was wet more than a few inches up from the floor, because it wicks upward and crumbles. Insulation in an affected cavity. Particleboard or MDF anywhere, cabinet bases, vanity boxes, some flooring underlayment, because it swells and does not recover.
Solid wood, plywood, concrete and masonry usually dry and stay. The judgment call is engineered flooring, which sometimes recovers and sometimes delaminates weeks later.
Two trades, sometimes two invoices
Mitigation and drying is one specialty. Rebuilding, drywall, paint, flooring, trim, is general contracting. Some firms do both, some do only the first and hand the second off. Worth asking early, because a quote that covers only the drying can look much cheaper than one that covers the whole job.
A question that comes up early
- How long does it take to dry out walls after water damage? There is no fixed number of days: framing and drywall are checked against a dry reference elsewhere in the house, and the equipment stays until that reading is matched. Older construction, plaster over lath in particular, can hold moisture behind a surface that already looks and feels dry, which is why the reading matters more than how the wall looks.