Fire Reconstruction and Fire Damage Repair in Lakeland and Plant City

Mitigation stops the damage from getting worse. Reconstruction puts the house back together. They are two different jobs, usually done by two different companies, and the gap between them is where fire projects stall for months.

Mitigation is emergency work in the first hours and days: board-up, tarping, water extraction, drying, soot removal, and tearing out materials that cannot be saved. Reconstruction is licensed construction: framing, roofing, electrical, plumbing, drywall, cabinets, flooring, paint, permits, and inspections. A cleanup crew can legally do the first. Only a licensed contractor can do the second.

One piece of mitigation is not ours. Water extraction and structural drying after the fire department leaves belong to our sister company, True Plumbers, at trueplumbers.com. One call to us routes it to them, and we pick up the cleanup and the rebuild from there. We would rather tell you that plainly than claim a scope we do not hold.

Once the fire department clears the scene and everyone is safe, protect the house and protect your claim. The damage does not stop when the flames are out. Soot keeps corroding surfaces, water from firefighting soaks into framing, and an open roof lets in rain and animals until it is covered.

Published industry guides put fire damage restoration at roughly $4 to $7 per square foot, averaging about $5.50, with a typical total job landing between $8,000 and $18,000. Those figures are HomeGuide's. Palm Build reports a wider national spread of $3,098 to $51,243 with an average near $27,091, which shows how far the number moves with the size of the fire.

What burned matters more than square footage. A Class A fire in wood, paper, and textiles usually runs $8,000 to $14,000. A kitchen or grease fire runs higher, $11,000 to $18,000, because grease-borne smoke coats everything and the room is full of cabinetry and appliances.

A single fire-damaged room usually takes four to eight weeks of construction. A multi-room fire with smoke through the house and structural repairs runs three to six months. A total loss rebuilt from the foundation runs nine to eighteen months from the night of the fire to the day you get the keys back.

Construction is rarely the slow part. Three things set the schedule. First, agreeing on scope with your insurance carrier, which can take a week or run past a month when the adjuster and the contractor are working from different numbers. Second, permitting through Polk or Hillsborough county, which adds weeks before a framer can start. Third, selections, because cabinets and flooring have lead times whether the house burned or not.

We build the schedule around those three and tell you which one you are waiting on at any given moment.

Smoke keeps working after the fire is out. Soot is acidic, so the longer it sits the more it etches glass, yellows paint, and corrodes wiring and appliances. The odor hides in porous materials and in the air handler, which is why a house can still smell like the fire months after the walls were wiped down.

We clean at the source rather than only where you can see it, decontaminate the HVAC system so it stops recirculating the smell, and tell you honestly which contents are worth restoring. Heavier smoke damage work has its own page.

One team and one project manager from the first phone call to the final walkthrough. The durations below are typical ranges, not promises. Your project manager gives you real dates once the scope is settled.

For the rebuild phase, a state general contractor license carries more weight than a cleaning certification. Florida license CBC1258346 is what allows a company to pull permits, alter structure, and pass county inspection on your home. Restoration certifications cover cleaning and drying methods. They do not authorize construction.

That distinction decides who you should call. A mitigation-only company cleans your house and then hands the rebuild to someone else, and the second company inherits a scope it did not write. We hold the license, we self-perform the trades, we run our own design showroom for cabinets and countertops, and we stay on the job until the final inspection clears.

Depending on what the fire reached, the work runs through our kitchen fire repair, smoke damage remediation, or complete loss fire rebuilds teams. Many homeowners use the reconstruction to change something they never liked, so the same crews handle kitchen remodeling and new kitchen cabinets while the walls are already open. Our recent projects and our customer reviews show how those rebuilds finish.

True Builders is family-owned, founded in 2009, and rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau.

We work out of two offices. The main office is at 4000 N Frontage Rd in Plant City, and the Lakeland office is at 2829 Badger Rd #19. Both sit inside the area we serve, so a project manager can be at your house the same day instead of being dispatched from another county.

Around Lakeland that covers Lakeland Highlands, Highland City, Mulberry, Kathleen, and Gibsonia. Across the rest of Polk County it covers Winter Haven, Bartow, Auburndale, Haines City, and Davenport. To the west it covers Plant City, Dover, Turkey Creek, and Thonotosassa, and we also take fire work in Tampa, Brandon, Valrico, Seffner, Wesley Chapel, and Zephyrhills.

The Ranney family lost their Lakeland home to a fire and told the story on camera after we rebuilt it. Storm damage runs through the same reconstruction crews, which is how we keep them busy between fires.

A fire claim is settled on documentation, and most homeowners are trying to assemble it from a hotel room. We take that off you. From the first visit we photograph the damage, build an itemized list of what was lost, and write a scope your adjuster can price line by line.

Then we talk to the carrier directly about scope and cost, so you are not relaying construction questions between two parties who both expect you to know the answer. If the settlement leaves a gap, whether that is your deductible or an upgrade you want while the wall is open, financing is available.

There is no obligation at the consultation. We walk the damage, put the scope and the number in writing, and you decide.