About the Company and the Owner Who Started It

The First Job That Led to the Company

Brian Cox started Andersonville Restoration in 2006. Before that came his first job, hauling soaked carpet and padding out of a flooded Chicago basement, and it showed him how much a family needs in the first hour: someone who shows up, explains the plan and gets the drying started.

He wanted to work that way every time. Today he is the company’s owner and its manager.

The first hour matters because water keeps moving. It wicks up drywall and soaks into wood floors and framing, and the longer it sits, the more of a room has to come out instead of being dried where it is.

The Jobs Brian Finds Most Interesting

The jobs Brian finds most interesting are water losses that have traveled. Water from a pipe leaking inside a wall, or from a bathroom overflow upstairs, rarely stays where it started. It runs along joists and pipes, wicks up drywall and spreads under flooring, so the wet area often reaches well past the stain anyone can see.

In a Chicago two-flat, that can mean following a leak from a second-floor bathroom down through the ceiling below and into the walls of the first-floor unit. In a finished basement, it can mean water that ran under a floating floor all the way to the far wall. Plaster walls, tile floors and kitchen cabinets each hide water in their own way.

Tracing it takes patience, and he likes finding every wet spot. A spot missed behind a wall tends to show up months later as mold, a musty odor, peeling paint or a cupped floor, after the room already looks finished.

Careful, Steady Work Comes Ahead of the Rebuild

In Brian’s view, good damage restoration is careful, steady work done before any rebuilding starts. It is tempting to put a room back together as soon as the water is gone, but new drywall over damp studs, or new flooring over a damp subfloor, seals the moisture in.

So we keep drying until the readings say the structure is dry, and then we rebuild the walls, floors and ceilings that had to come out. The order is the same after a burst pipe, a sewage backup or the water used to put out a fire.

Drying in time is also what keeps the rebuild small. Framing and subfloor that are dried before they have soaked for long can often stay, and only what could not be dried has to be replaced. Brian looks at the damage in person before the work begins, and the work that follows moves at the pace the drying allows.

Board-Up and Rebuilding in the Same Hands

We also rebuild the walls, floors and ceilings that had to come out, so the company that dries a room is the one that rebuilds it. The tear-out can be done with the rebuild in mind: drywall is usually cut along straight lines that patch cleanly, and the same readings that decided what came out decide when it goes back.

We board up openings after a fire or a storm as well, so a broken window or an opened wall can be closed off while the rest of the work goes on. For the property owner, that means one company to call with questions, from the first day of drying until the rebuilt rooms are back in use.

The Damage We Clean Up and the Rooms We Put Back

These are the jobs we take on, from the first cleanup through the rebuild:

• Water damage restoration
• Flood cleanup
• Sewage backup cleanup
• Fire and smoke damage cleanup
• Mold remediation
• Structural drying
• Odor removal
• Storm damage repair
• Board-up
• Rebuilding walls, floors and ceilings

What We Do Book Service

Working Out of Chicago

We work out of Chicago, and the areas we serve are Andersonville, Edgewater, Rogers Park, Uptown and Lincoln Square, along with nearby Evanston and Skokie. It is an area of basements, shared walls and stacked units, where water rarely stays in one room.