Repair
Floor Repair and Water Damage in Fort Worth
Burst-pipe damage, squeaks, soft spots, cupped boards and failed subfloors — diagnosed at the cause rather than patched at the symptom.
- Pricing
- Estimated after the floor is opened and the cause is found
- Timeline
- Depends entirely on how far the water travelled and how long it sat
The most common reason we are called to a damaged floor in Tarrant County is not weather. It is plumbing.
February 2021, and every freeze since
The 2021 winter storm burst supply lines across this county on a scale the metro had never seen. Five years on it is still the origin story behind a large share of the damaged floors we look at, and every hard freeze since has produced a smaller version of it. Water-damaged flooring after a freeze is the longer account of what that does to a floor.
That matters because a freeze event damages a floor differently from a flood. The water arrives from inside the walls and from the ceiling rather than rising from outside. It is clean water, which changes the remediation category. And it travels: down through a wall cavity, along the top of a slab, under the finish floor, and out into the middle of a room that had no pipe in it.
Find the source, then map where it went
A repair over water still sitting in an assembly is a scheduled second repair. So the first question is always whether the source is resolved, and if it is not we will say so and tell you to get a plumber in before we quote.
The second question is where the water travelled. In a slab house it tracks along the slab under the finish floor and shows up at the perimeter of the room and at the sill plate. Pulling three boards at a wall line tells you more than running a moisture meter across the surface, because the surface dries first and lies about what is underneath it.
In a pier-and-beam house — Fairmount, Ryan Place, and the older stock generally — water that reaches the floor keeps going. It wets the joists in a crawl space that does not dry quickly, and a floor that looks acceptable six weeks later can be sitting on framing that is not. Opening it up is the only honest assessment.
Dry to a target, not to an appearance
Wetted framing and subfloor are dried to a documented moisture content before anything gets closed back up. “It looks dry” is not a measurement, and closing an assembly that is still holding water is how a repair becomes a mould problem.
This is also the step that most often gets compressed when someone is in a hurry to have their house back, and it is the one worth being patient about.
Cupping, crowning and the mistake that costs the most
Cupping is edges high, centre low, and it means the underside of the board is wetter than the top. It is the standard signature of water from below or from a slab.
The expensive mistake is sanding it flat while the floor is still wet. When the board eventually dries and relaxes, the middle — which has just been sanded down to meet the high edges — becomes crowned, and the floor is permanently wrong, with less thickness left to fix it.
So the sequence is: dry, wait, reassess, then sand. That order is set out in fixing cupped hardwood floors, and the opposite failure — boards lifting off the substrate — in hardwood floor buckling. Many cupped floors flatten enough on their own that the eventual refinish is routine. Some boards are permanently compressed at the edges and need replacing. You cannot tell which until it has dried.
Board replacement
Individual boards are cut out and woven in, matched for species, grain and age. On a hundred-year-old longleaf pine floor the matching is the cost and the fitting is the straightforward part — finding a board that reads correctly beside century-old timber takes stock and patience.
Done well, a woven repair disappears into the refinish. Done as a patch, it reads as a rectangle in the middle of the room for as long as the floor exists. Hardwood floor repair cost covers what drives the difference between a few boards and a room.
Squeaks and soft spots
Squeaks come from movement between the decking and the joist, and they are fixed at that interface. In an accessible crawl space the repair is quick and cheap; the diagnosis is the skilled part.
Soft spots are the symptom with the widest range of causes, which is why we open rather than assume. Decking that has been wet, a joist that has split, a span that deflects, a missing block — the fix ranges from an afternoon to a structural conversation, and quoting it without looking would be guessing.
Tile and grout
Cracked tiles come out and go back, and grout lines get cut out and refilled. But first: is the slab underneath still moving? Repairing over live movement is repairing the same floor twice, and if that is what is happening the honest recommendation is crack isolation and a reset rather than a patch.
Typical market ranges for this work
North Texas ranges gathered from published contractor pricing, so you have a reference point before anyone comes out. They are not our quote — where your job lands inside a range depends on what we find underneath.
Refinishing, repair and preparation
| Item | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Sand and refinish hardwood — 3 coats Species, how many previous sandings the boards have left in them | $3 to $6 per sq ft |
| Screen and recoat — no sanding Only worth it above bare wood; winter heating also opens gaps a recoat cannot fill | $1 to $3 per sq ft |
| Dustless sanding surcharge Containment matters more in an occupied historic home than an empty one | Usually folded into the sq ft rate |
| Board replacement — matched and woven in Matching a 1920s longleaf pine board is the expensive part, not the labour | $100 to $400 per board |
| Water damage repair — after a burst supply line How long the water sat, and whether the subfloor delaminated | $400 to $1,800 per room |
| Subfloor repair or replacement Joist condition in a pier-and-beam house is only knowable once it is open | $3 to $9 per sq ft |
| Slab grinding and flatness correction How far out of tolerance the slab reads against the material's spec | $1 to $4 per sq ft |
| Self-levelling underlayment pour Depth. A 1/4 inch skim and a 1.5 inch pour are not the same job | $2 to $8 per sq ft |
Typical North Texas market ranges, gathered from published contractor pricing. Not a quote.