Storm damage board up
A storm damage board up closes an opening in your house so weather and people stay out of it until the real repair happens. A window is gone, a door will not latch, a limb took out a section of wall. Our crews cover it, fasten it properly and leave the house secure. That work sits under exterior repair along with the rest of the small jobs the Repairs division handles with W2 crews rather than subcontractors.
Now the part most board up pages will not tell you. Wright’s Repairs does not run an emergency line and does not take same day calls. Our office is open Monday through Friday, eight in the morning until four in the afternoon, and the promise is next business day. If a tree is in your living room at eleven at night, we are the wrong number and you would be leaving a voicemail. This page is written so you know that before you need us, not after.
What a board up is actually for
A board up buys time. The permanent fix needs a measurement, an order, a delivery and a dry day. None of that happens tonight. What has to happen tonight is that rain stops coming through the hole, the cat stays inside, and the opening stops being an invitation. A panel that is cut to the opening and fastened to something solid does all three.
Done badly, it does none of them. A sheet leaned against the outside of a window frame keeps nothing out. A panel screwed into rotten trim pulls loose in the next wind. The details below are the difference, and they are why this is carpentry rather than a favor.
If it cannot wait until tomorrow
Call someone who answers at that hour. For a downed line, a gas smell or a wall that is visibly out of plumb, that means the utility and the fire department, not a contractor. For an opening that has to be closed before morning, a twenty four hour restoration company is the right call and there are several working across Southeast Michigan. We would rather point you there than pretend we can be at your house by midnight.
What we do not claim
We are not an insurance restoration firm. We do not negotiate with adjusters, we do not bill carriers directly, and nobody here will tell you what your policy covers. That is between you and your agent. What we can do is write a clear scope of the work we performed and hand you photographs of what was behind the plywood, which is useful to have regardless of how your claim goes.
Michigan storms are wind in summer and ice in winter
Two different events break houses in this state. Summer brings straight line wind ahead of a squall, which arrives from one direction, gets under anything with an edge, and peels it. Winter brings load. Freezing rain coats every branch and every wire, weight goes up until something gives, and the limb that comes down was healthy in June.
The damage looks different too. Wind damage is dramatic and obvious from the curb. Ice damage tends to be a single point of failure in an awkward spot, a limb through a soffit or a corner of roof edge, and half the time the homeowner finds it from inside when the ceiling starts to stain. Summer damage also tends to land across a whole neighborhood at once, which is when out of town crews start knocking on doors. Both events end the same way, with an opening that needs covering.
What breaks when the wind gets under
Certain failures repeat. Vinyl siding unzips from a corner or a butt joint and takes a run of panels with it, leaving housewrap flapping. A soffit panel lifts out of its channel and the wind gets into the attic through the gap. A window takes a branch and the sash is gone but the frame is fine. An exterior door gets pushed hard enough that the jamb splits at the strike and the slab no longer latches.
- Glass gone, frame intact, which is the easiest opening to cover cleanly.
- Siding and housewrap torn off a wall section with sheathing exposed to rain.
- A door that closes but no longer locks, which is a security problem before it is a carpentry one.
Each of those gets a different cover. We look at the opening before we decide what to cut, because the fastening surface matters more than the size of the hole. On the older bungalows around Ypsilanti, the trim you would naturally screw into is often the only thing holding the assembly together.
Lath and plaster changes the calculation again. In a house from the twenties there is frequently no stud where you expect one, the sheathing is diagonal boards with gaps between them, and a screw that feels tight has bitten into nothing but plaster and air. We probe for framing before we fasten. Where there is none, we span the opening with a cleat on the inside face and bolt through the wall.
The first hour, before anybody gets there
Get everyone away from the damaged area and stay out of any room with a sagging ceiling. Kill power to that part of the house at the panel if water is running anywhere near an outlet or a fixture, and if you are unsure which breaker, shut the main. Do not climb on the roof. Do not pull at a limb that is holding weight, because whatever it is resting on is the only thing keeping the rest of it up.
Then move what you can out of the way of water. Furniture off wet carpet, electronics unplugged and carried out, anything absorbent lifted off the floor. Water travels along joists and shows up two rooms away, so check the level below before you assume the damage is local. Reducing what gets soaked in the first hour is worth more than anything a contractor does in the first day.
Photograph it before you cover it
Once plywood goes over an opening, nobody can see what was under it. Take pictures first, from far enough back to show the room or the wall, then close enough to show the break. Get the debris where it landed. Get the wet floor. Timestamps come from your phone automatically, and the whole set takes four minutes.
That record is yours. We take our own photographs before we cover anything and send them to you with the scope, but your set is the one that exists from the moment it happened rather than from whenever somebody showed up. Homeowners who keep documentation of their house anyway, the sort that comes out of an annual walkthrough, are in far better shape after a storm.
Plywood against a proper temporary panel
Half inch exterior grade plywood is the standard cover for a broken window or a hole in a wall. It is cheap, it is stiff, and it will hold for weeks. The mistake is treating the sheet as the whole job. A panel needs to bear on solid framing, get fastened through the sheathing rather than into trim, and be sealed at the top edge so water running down the wall does not go behind it.
For an opening that has to stay covered for a month while a unit is on order, we build a better panel. That means an insulated cover, or plywood with rigid foam behind it and the perimeter taped, so you are not heating the outdoors through a hole in February. It costs a little more and it is obvious the first night. The same logic drives sealing the drafts anywhere else in the house.
Boarding a door and still living in your house
A broken window can be covered solid. A door cannot, if it is the only way into the kitchen. Boarding a door opening well means keeping the opening usable, which usually means a temporary slab in the existing frame with working hardware, or a panel hinged and hasped so the household can get in and out while the jamb is on order.
Split jambs are the common repair. The strike side blows out at the plate, the slab swings but nothing latches, and the fix is a reinforced strike and a repaired or replaced jamb leg. That is ordinary door repair work. Where the unit itself is finished, we price exterior door replacement instead, because rebuilding a twenty year old entry door around a split jamb is money spent twice.
Why a tarp on a roof is not our work
If the opening is in the roof, it goes to a roofer. Tarping a roof means working on a wet slope at height, fastening through a covering that is shedding water, and taking responsibility for a surface we do not repair or warranty. We send that to a partner every time, and we will not board over a ceiling opening while water is still coming in above it, because that hides the problem without solving it.
Roof edge, soffit and fascia sit in the middle. Where a limb caught the overhang and the damage is to trim and the soffit panel rather than the roof deck, that is carpentry and it is ours. Where the deck or the shingles are involved, the roofer goes first and we follow. Once the water is stopped, keeping it stopped is what preventing water damage is about.
Make it safe, document it, then repair it
That sequence is the entire method and people reverse it constantly. Homeowners tear out wet drywall the first night, before anyone has a photograph, and lose the record of what happened. Or they wait on the permanent repair because a decision is pending somewhere, while the opening sits under a sheet that was never sealed at the top and the sheathing quietly takes on water for six weeks.
Cover it well, write it down, then repair it on a schedule that suits the materials and the weather. We can do the covering and the repair, or only the repair if somebody else got there first. Either way the estimate follows the way we run a job, with a written scope before work starts.
What we do once the plywood comes down
This is the part Wright’s does best. Torn siding gets replaced and blended into the existing run, which is a matching problem on anything over fifteen years old. Damaged trim and casing get rebuilt to profile, which is trim carpentry and often means milling a piece to match rather than buying stock. Openings get reframed where a sash or a unit went out, and we install a replacement window or repair the existing one.
Inside, water and impact take out drywall and ceilings. Patching, taping and texture matching is drywall repair, and it is followed by interior painting that carries to a natural break rather than stopping at the patch. A house built before 1978 changes the rules. Federal law requires a certified firm to follow specific lead safe work practices when disturbing painted surfaces, so ask any contractor, including us, how they handle that before demolition starts.
How long a cover should stay up
Weeks, not seasons. A temporary panel is a temporary panel, and every month it stays on, the fastenings work looser, the seal at the top edge gives up, and the sheathing behind it takes on moisture it does not shed. Freeze and thaw works at every fastener all winter, so a panel that was solid in November is loose by March. Neighbors notice, and so does anyone driving past looking for an empty house.
If the repair is stalled waiting on a unit, tell us and we will check the cover rather than leave it. For a property nobody is living in through the cold months, that check belongs in a home watch routine. Pairing it with winterizing the house and with downspout extension and drainage catches most of what goes wrong in an unoccupied house.
How we work across Southeast Michigan
Storm work follows the trees. The old streets of Ann Arbor and the village edges of Chelsea and Dexter have mature canopy right over the rooflines, so limb strikes on soffit and roof edge are the pattern there. Down toward Monroe, open ground means wind hits walls directly and siding is what comes off.
Postwar ranches in Westland and subdivisions in Canton give us predictable framing and a fastening surface we can count on, which makes a clean cover faster. We work across all six counties from the shop on Platt Road, and our full range of exterior services means the follow up repair, including siding and deck repairs, comes from the same company that put the panel up.
Call us for the part that can wait
If the opening has to be closed tonight, call a restoration company that runs an after hours crew. If it can hold until morning, call us at eight and we will be out next business day with a licensed builder and a written one-year workmanship warranty on the repair. Sellers and buyers working through storm items on an inspection punch list can send the report straight over.
View our Portfolio to see the siding, trim and interior work that follows a storm repair, then contact us now for a free quote on covering an opening, repairing a split jamb or putting a damaged wall back the way it was.
