Repair
Floor Repair and Water Restoration in Leander
Soft spots, squeaks, cupping, buckling and the aftermath of a supply line that let go — diagnosed at the cause before anything is replaced.
- Pricing
- Estimated after inspection, because the cause decides the scope
- Timeline
- Drying time governs the schedule, and it cannot be shortened by working faster
What this covers
Diagnosis and repair of floors that have gone wrong: water damage from burst supply lines and appliance failures, cupping and crowning, buckled and lifted floors, soft spots, subfloor failure, squeaks, and board or section replacement woven into an existing floor.
The first half of this job is finding out what actually happened. Replacing a floor without doing that is how a floor gets replaced twice.
The water event here is a burst line, not a river
Central Texas floods are flash floods along creeks and low water crossings, and the housing in this corridor is largely outside them. That is worth saying plainly, because it means the water damage we attend has a completely different profile from the river flooding that dominates the Gulf Coast.
What happens here is a supply line, a water heater or an appliance connector letting go inside a conditioned house. Nobody is home. It runs. Clean water travels along the top of the slab or into a crawl space, wicks into the underside of boards and into the bottom edge of skirting, and surfaces at a room perimeter days later — often in a room that is not the one where the failure occurred.
That is a Category One clean-water loss with a delayed presentation. It is a different remediation category, a different drying strategy and a different insurance conversation from a contaminated flood, and it is much better news than most people assume when they first see the damage.
Freeze events
The February 2021 freeze taught the region a lesson it has partly forgotten. Pipes in Central Texas garages, attics and exterior walls remain far less protected than in genuinely cold climates, because for most of the year they do not need to be.
Every subsequent hard freeze produces the same call pattern, and it arrives on a delay: the burst happens during the freeze, the water runs behind a wall, and the flooring complaint reaches us a week to ten days later once it has travelled. If your area has just been through a freeze and a floor has started to feel soft or a skirting board has darkened, that is what you are looking at.
The drought cycle, and the calls it generates
The second common cause we attend is not a leak at all.
Through a severe dry spell, the clay under a slab on the eastern side of the escarpment loses volume. The perimeter of the structure settles. Tile grout lines crack in a straight run. Doors stop latching. A wood floor develops a slope, or a laminate floor’s seams begin to open along one wall. When the rains return, some of it reverses.
Every one of those presents as a flooring problem and none of them is one. Telling the difference before quoting a repair is the most useful thing on this page, and it is the reason we ask about foundation history, door behaviour and when the symptoms appeared rather than just measuring the room.
Cupping and crowning, and why waiting is often right
Cupping is a moisture gradient. The underside of the board is wetter than the top, the underside swells, and the edges rise above the centre.
Here it follows the drought and rain cycle rather than a Gulf Coast summer humidity curve. A floor that cups after a wet spring may well flatten on its own once the slab beneath it gives up its moisture and the board equalises.
Sanding a cupped floor flat removes material from the raised edges. When the board then flattens, the centre is proud — a crown, permanent, visible in raking light across the entire floor for the rest of its life. It is the single most expensive avoidable mistake in this trade and it is made by crews in a hurry to book the work.
We meter, we wait, and we sand when the readings say the floor has stabilised. Sometimes that means telling you to leave it for a season. That is a smaller job for us in the short term and the right advice.
How we work a water loss
Find the source. Replacing a floor over a live leak replaces it twice. If the source is not obvious we say so and you get a plumber in before we quote.
Map the extent. A moisture meter and thermal imaging across the whole affected area and the rooms adjoining it, not an estimate by eye. Water goes further than the stain.
Dry to a target. Air movers and dehumidification, monitored against a moisture target rather than run for a fixed number of days. A substrate that dries within days is generally salvageable; one that delaminates is not, and knowing which you have takes measurement.
Repair only what did not recover. Once it is genuinely dry, a surprising amount of what looked ruined is fine. What is not gets replaced.
Document. Readings recorded throughout, in a form an insurance adjuster will accept.
Board and section replacement
Where boards do have to come out, they are woven into the surrounding floor rather than patched in as a visible block — staggered joints, matched grain and species, and a finish blended into the existing coating.
Matching an older species is the expensive part rather than the carpentry, particularly with the longleaf pine in Hyde Park, Old Town Georgetown and Taylor. It is worth seeing a sample against your own floor before you agree to the work.
Typical market ranges for this work
Central Texas bands collected from published contractor pricing, so you walk into the conversation with a reference point. They are not our quote. Which end of a band a specific job lands on is decided by the substrate, not by the plank.
Refinishing, repair and substrate preparation
| Item | Typical band |
|---|---|
| Sand and refinish hardwood — three coats Which timber it is, and how much of its sanding life previous owners already spent | $3.50 to $7 per sq ft |
| Screen and recoat — no sanding Only viable while the finish is worn but not breached through to bare wood | $1.25 to $3.25 per sq ft |
| Dust containment Matters more in an occupied house than an empty one, and should be asked about either way | Usually inside the sq ft rate |
| Replacing individual boards, matched to the floor Finding a match for 1920s longleaf pine is the cost, not the carpentry | $120 to $450 per board |
| Water damage repair — per affected room How long it sat, and whether the subfloor or the slab took it | $450 to $2,000 |
| Subfloor repair or replacement Joist condition in a pier-and-beam house is unknowable until it is open | $3.50 to $10 per sq ft |
| Slab grinding and flatness correction The gap between what the slab measures and what the chosen floor will accept | $1.25 to $4.50 per sq ft |
| Self-levelling underlayment pour Depth. A quarter-inch skim and a two-inch pour are not the same job | $2.50 to $9 per sq ft |
| Crack isolation or uncoupling membrane Standard specification on clay east of the escarpment; optional on rock west of it | $1.75 to $4 per sq ft |
Typical Central Texas market bands, collected from published contractor pricing. Not a quote.