How DryMark Restoration Englewood Was Born in Englewood
We remember the exact afternoon in 2011 when we knew Englewood needed something different. Alicia Brennan was still working claims on the adjustment side then, walking through a water-damaged colonial on Tenafly Road with a homeowner who’d already had two restoration companies quote the job. One wanted $14,000 to tear out walls that were still reading dry on the pin meter. The other wouldn’t put anything in writing. The homeowner, a retired teacher, kept asking which number was real, and Alicia realized the answer was: neither. The industry was selling fear and invoices, not dry studs and documentation.
That evening, Alicia called the DryMark Restoration headquarters and asked what it would take to bring the brand to Bergen County. The answer was the Haven Standard, which was built on the same thing she’d been fighting for on the adjuster side - daily moisture readings, room by room, signed and dated, that turn a restoration invoice into a claim an insurer pays without a fight. We opened our Englewood branch that same year, operating out of a rented bay off Broad Avenue until we could afford our own space. The promise we made then is the one we still keep: every job gets a written scope and a flat price before anyone starts, and every job leaves with a documented record of what we actually found.
Alicia Brennan’s Personal Connection to the Damage Restoration Trade
Alicia didn’t stumble into this work. She was pushed into it by curiosity and kept in it by the smell of wet plaster drying properly.
Before DryMark, she spent years on the other side of the clipboard - the insurance adjuster walking through finished basements in Leonia and gutted kitchens in Fort Lee, telling homeowners their documentation didn’t match their damage. She saw good contractors get denied because they couldn’t prove their work, and bad contractors get paid because they knew how to write a compelling invoice. The injustice of it bothered her more than she expected. She started staying late, calling restoration companies to ask why they hadn’t taken photos of the subfloor, why their moisture logs skipped three days. Most hung up. One old-school tradesman in Hackensack didn’t. He met her at a job site at 6 a.m., handed her a Dri-Eaz moisture sensor, and said, “If you care this much, learn the tool.”
The first time Alicia held that sensor against a stud and saw the number drop from 18% to 12% over a week of proper drying, something clicked. This was measurable. This was honest. You couldn’t talk your way around a moisture reading the way you could around an invoice description. She started taking jobs on weekends, then evenings, then realized she was making more money proving dry than denying claims.
What gets her out of bed now isn’t the emergency calls, though we get plenty of those in Englewood - the burst pipes in January when the Palisades freeze, the sewage backups after summer storms overwhelm the Ridgefield Park system. It’s the follow-up. The call six months later from a homeowner in Englewood Cliffs who found our moisture log in their file and finally understood why their claim went through without a fight. The text from a property manager in Washington Heights saying they recommended us because we were the only ones who showed them the photos.
If Alicia weren’t doing this, she’d probably be arguing with someone about documentation standards somewhere else. It’s who she is. The tools have gotten better - we use Phoenix dehumidifiers now, and the RIA training she completed changed how we approach Category 3 losses - but the satisfaction is the same. Dry is a number. Getting there is the whole job.
Meet Alicia Brennan - The Person Behind Every Job
Alicia Brennan is the Owner and Founder of DryMark Restoration Englewood, independently owned and operated under the DryMark brand since 2011. She holds IICRC certification in Water Damage Restoration (WRT) and Applied Structural Drying (ASD), and she completed her RIA advanced training in 2019. Before launching this branch, she worked as a property claims adjuster for a major carrier, reviewing restoration documentation from the payer side - an experience that shaped every policy we have now.
What separates Alicia from a corporate franchise technician is simple: she’s the one who answers when the office line rings at midnight, and she’s the one who reviews every moisture log before it goes to your adjuster. She lives in Bergen County, shops at the same Englewood farmers market as many of our customers, and has a stubborn habit of photographing her own home repairs to document the before-and-after. She believes every homeowner deserves to see what was actually wet, what actually dried, and what was actually done - in writing, before anyone starts, under Haven Standard Clause 1.
Her personal commitment to you: if she wouldn’t show the documentation to her own mother, the job isn’t finished.
Before
AfterOur Promise to Englewood Homeowners
Our values aren’t posters on a wall. They’re the rules Alicia wrote after too many afternoons watching homeowners get hurt.
Have it in writing. Every restoration job we do in Englewood, Englewood Cliffs, or Leonia starts with a flat price and a written scope. Not an estimate. A fixed number. Alicia created this policy after watching a homeowner in Fort Lee sign a $3,200 “estimate” that became an $8,700 invoice because the crew “found more moisture.” We don’t do that. Clause 1 of the Haven Standard requires the written price before we start.
Arrive on schedule. We give you a real window, a named technician, and a text when they’re on the way. Alicia implemented this after her own basement flooded and she spent four hours waiting for a company that kept saying “twenty minutes.”
Evidence on every job. Photos and readings of what we actually found, not what we think your insurance wants to hear. This is the core of DryMark’s origin story - the adjuster who founded the brand in 2011 built the entire system because he was tired of denying claims that were documented badly rather than restored badly.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed - Every pro working under our name is required to hold the license their state requires
- Insured & bonded - Protection for your property while we’re in your home
- Years of local experience - Serving Englewood and Bergen County since 2011
- Strong local reputation - Built one documented job at a time
These matter because damage restoration happens inside your home, often when you’re already distressed. The license means someone has verified our training. The insurance means if we damage something, you’re not fighting our personal checking account for repairs. The local tenure means we know which Englewood building department requires pre-demo permits, which Tenafly condos have asbestos notification rules, and how the humidity off the Hudson affects drying times in Palisades Park basements. The reputation means you can find our previous customers and ask them what we actually delivered.
We are independently owned and operated, with the standards, documentation system, and buying power of DryMark Restoration behind us.
Rooted in Englewood
We’re not a truck that appears from somewhere else when the rain hits. Our office is here. Alicia lives twenty minutes from the jobs she supervises. We’ve dried basements in the historic district near Depot Square, handled mold remediation in the split-levels off Broad Avenue, and done emergency board-ups after fires in the garden apartments near Mackay Park. We know which streets in Leonia back up during heavy rain, which Fort Lee high-rises have the slowest elevator access for equipment, and why the older homes in Englewood Cliffs need extra care with plaster lath during water removal. The brand standards come from DryMark. The local knowledge comes from showing up here, year after year, with a moisture meter and a camera.
Written by Alicia Brennan, Owner at DryMark Restoration Englewood, serving Englewood since 2011.