How DryMark Restoration Hollywood Was Born in Hollywood
We opened this branch in 2011, the same year DryMark Restoration started, because we’d watched enough water damage jobs go wrong in South Florida to know that Hollywood homeowners needed something different. The moment that stuck with us happened on a job in North Miami Beach, not long before we made the move. A homeowner had already paid another company to dry out a kitchen flood. They’d run fans for three days, packed up, and left. The cabinets looked fine. The homeowner called us two weeks later because the wall behind the refrigerator had started to bloom with mold.
We pulled the moisture meter out and found readings of 28% in the drywall. Industry standard for “dry” is below 16%. That other crew had never checked. They’d billed for three days of equipment rental and left a family with a $14,000 mold remediation that their insurer initially denied because there was no documentation of what had actually been dried, or to what number.
That was the gap we saw. Hollywood wasn’t short of restoration companies. It was short of companies that measured, wrote it down, and stood by the number. We brought DryMark here because the brand already had the system: daily moisture logs, room by room, signed and dated, that turn a restoration invoice into a claim an adjuster pays without a fight. We promised we’d run every job that way. We still do.
Alicia Brennan’s Personal Connection to the Damage Restoration Trade
Alicia didn’t start in restoration. She started in claims, working as an adjuster for a national insurer out of Fort Lauderdale, sitting in a cubicle with fluorescent lights and a stack of files that smelled like photocopier toner. For five years she denied claims that were documented badly rather than restored badly. She remembers one file in particular: a family in Plantation, three kids under ten, living in a hotel for six weeks because their restoration contractor couldn’t produce moisture readings to prove the job was done. The house was probably dry. But “probably” doesn’t pay a hotel bill.
She left that job in 2010 and spent a year riding along with crews, learning the equipment, the physics of psychrometrics, the smell of a properly dehumidified room versus one that still held moisture in the walls. The first time she held a thermal imaging camera and saw the cold blue patch behind a seemingly dry bathroom tile, something clicked. She could see what others couldn’t. More than that, she could prove it.
What gets her out of bed now isn’t the emergency calls, though those come. It’s the morning after a job, when she pulls the final moisture readings and every number is below the dry standard. The documentation is clean. The homeowner has a file they can hand to their insurer with confidence. If she weren’t doing this, she’d probably be back in some version of that adjuster’s chair, fighting for people who’d been left without proof. This is better. She gets to build the proof herself.
The work smells like ozone and damp plaster and, eventually, nothing at all. That’s the goal: a house that smells like a house again.
Meet Alicia Brennan - The Person Behind Every Job
Alicia Brennan is the Owner and Founder of DryMark Restoration Hollywood. She holds IICRC certification in Water Damage Restoration and has spent the last 15 years building a local team that works to the Haven Standard she helped implement here. What separates her from a corporate technician is simple: she’s the one who answers when the moisture readings don’t make sense, and she’s the one who signs off on every drying log before it goes to the insurer.
Outside of work, she restores vintage Florida fishing maps, the kind printed on linen that show the Intracoastal before the condos went up. It’s the same impulse: preserving something that water tried to ruin, documenting the process, getting it back to what it was. She lives in Hollywood, a few miles from the shop, and her commitment to every customer is direct: if your job doesn’t meet the Haven Standard, she’ll make it right herself.
Before
AfterOur Promise to Hollywood Homeowners
Our values aren’t posters on a wall. They’re the rules we operate under, drawn from the H.A.V.E.N. code that governs every DryMark branch.
Have it in writing. Every job starts with a flat price and a written scope. No one touches your home until you’ve seen both. We learned this the hard way early on, when a homeowner in Pembroke Pines was told one price over the phone and handed a bill 40% higher on-site. We don’t do that. We write it down, you sign it, we stick to it.
Arrive on schedule. We give a real window, name the technician assigned to your job, and text when they’re on the way. Not because it’s fancy, but because you’ve already got enough disruption without wondering if anyone’s coming.
Verified crews. Every pro working under our name is required to hold the license and insurance their state requires. Their license number is on your paperwork. You can look it up.
Evidence on every job. Photos and moisture readings of what we actually found, not what we think we found. Daily logs, signed and dated. This is what turns a restoration invoice into a claim an insurer will pay.
No surprises. No door upsell, no scope creep, no “while we’re in here.” The scope you signed is the scope we complete.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed restoration contractor, operating in full compliance with Florida requirements
- Insured & bonded for residential and commercial work
- Years of local experience serving Hollywood and surrounding South Florida communities
- Strong local reputation built on documented results and insurer-accepted drying logs
- IICRC-certified technicians trained in water damage restoration standards
- RIA-affiliated professionals connected to the Restoration Industry Association network
What this means for you: when you let someone into your home after a flood or leak, you’re trusting them with your floors, your walls, and often your largest financial asset. A state license means they’ve met Florida’s minimum competency bar. Insurance and bonding means you’re protected if something goes wrong. The IICRC certification means they know the difference between surface dry and actual dry, and the RIA connection means they’re held to industry-wide ethical standards. The local reputation means your neighbors have already tested us. The documentation means you can prove what was done.
Rooted in Hollywood
We’re based in Hollywood, not headquartered somewhere else and dispatching from a map. Our trucks carry equipment sized for South Florida humidity, not Arizona dry heat. We know the difference between a 1920s Hollywood Hills bungalow with plaster lathe walls and a 2005 condo off Young Circle with drywall and fiberglass insulation, because we’ve dried both. We’ve worked jobs near Hollywood Beach where the salt air complicates corrosion, and in the neighborhoods west of I-95 where summer storms back up drainage systems that were never designed for the rainfall we’re getting now. Alicia lives here. The crew lives here. When we say we’re local, we mean we drive the same roads you do and we know which ones flood first.
Written by Alicia Brennan, Owner at DryMark Restoration Hollywood, serving Hollywood, North Miami Beach, Miami Gardens, Fort Lauderdale, Plantation, Opa-locka, Pembroke Pines, Hialeah, Pompano Beach, Miami Beach, Margate, and Coconut Creek since 2011.