How Locally Was Born
It started with a phone call in the fall of 1997. A retired county extension agent named Ward Selby had been fielding complaints from neighbors for months, but this one stuck with him. A homeowner on the east side of Bloomington had water pouring through her kitchen ceiling at ten on a Tuesday night. She called the number with the biggest ad, spoke to someone friendly enough, and two hours later a truck with Michigan plates pulled up. The man at her door quoted triple what she’d been told on the phone. When she asked about the difference, he said her “situation was worse than described.” She paid because she was standing in an inch of water and didn’t know who else to call. Three weeks later the drywall failed again, and the number she’d called went straight to a full mailbox.
What bothered Ward wasn’t that bad companies existed. It was that there was no way to tell the real ones from the rest before you opened your door. So he sat at his kitchen table with a yellow legal pad and wrote down what a homeowner could actually verify in five minutes: a phone number with a local area code that a person answers, an address you can drive to, the owner’s name and face, and a license number you can look up. Any company willing to publish all four could carry his name. That list is still the entire standard, and it is still the only thing Locally sells.
We started in Bloomington, building that reputation one job at a time. Today, Locally is a family of trusted brands across multiple states, but the principle hasn’t changed. The person who answers the phone is still the person who shows up, and the price he says on the phone is still the price on the invoice.
Our Founder’s Personal Connection to the Damage Restoration Trade
We didn’t come to this work through a business school or a franchise seminar. We came to it the way most people in the trades do, sideways and by accident, through the back door of somebody else’s emergency.
Back in the mid-nineties, before Locally existed, we were working construction cleanup and small remodel jobs around Monroe County. The work was steady enough, but it wasn’t where our head lived. Then a friend of a friend called. A pipe had burst in a basement off Rogers Street while the family was visiting relatives in Indianapolis. They came home to four feet of standing water, their daughter’s piano floating like a raft, and the smell of wet plaster that hits you in the throat before you even reach the bottom stair. We helped them haul what could be saved, cut what couldn’t, and set up fans we’d borrowed from a painting contractor. We were there until three in the morning, and when we finally drove home through the empty streets of Bloomington, the heater blasting against our wet clothes, we realized we hadn’t checked the clock in hours.
That was the moment. Not the grandeur of saving a home, but the opposite: the smallness of it. The way a homeowner looks at you when they’ve lost the ability to fix their own space. The smell of wet drywall and the particular sound of a shop vac pulling water from carpet pad. The way a family stands in their driveway at midnight, wearing whatever they threw on, watching strangers carry their possessions into the yard. That look is why we’re still here, more than twenty-nine years later.
If we weren’t doing this, we’d probably be fixing something else. Old trucks, probably. There’s a satisfaction in restoration that remodeling doesn’t have. You aren’t improving what was fine. You’re returning what was broken to its former self. The work means showing up when people are at their most exposed, and leaving only when they can close their own door again with confidence.
Meet Our Team - The Person Behind Every Job
Owner & Founder
We’ve been in the damage restoration trade for more than twenty-nine years, since before the industry had the certifications it does now. We trained under the tradesmen who taught us to read a moisture meter properly, to know when carpet can be dried in place and when the pad is a loss, to spot the mold that grows behind baseboards before it blooms on the surface. We hold IICRC certification and have put our hands on every major drying system in the field, from B-Air axial fans to Injectidry cavity drying setups and XPOWER air scrubbers.
What sets us apart from a corporate franchise technician is simple: we’re going to see you again. At the hardware store, at the farmers market, at the high school game. We live twenty minutes from most of the homes we serve. On weekends, you’ll find us in the garage restoring a 1972 Ford F-250 that has taught us more about patience than any seminar. That patience is what we bring to your job. We don’t leave until the moisture readings say we can, and we don’t tell you work is finished just to get to the next call.
Our personal commitment to you is this: when you call (866) 624-5122, you reach a live coordinator who connects you directly with our local team. The price we discuss is the price on the invoice. No exceptions.
Our Promise to Homeowners
Our values aren’t posters on a wall. They’re the reason we still have the same phone number we started with in 1997.
Honest pricing. We learned early that the damage restoration industry had a reputation problem with estimates that ballooned once a crew was inside the house. Our policy is simple: we provide a written scope before work starts, and the figure on that document is the figure on the final invoice. We’ve walked away from jobs where the homeowner wanted us to start without one. That piece of paper protects both of us.
Quality equipment and methods. We use professional-grade drying systems from brands we trust, including Injectidry for cavity drying and XPOWER for air movement and filtration. We don’t cut corners with rental-store fans and hope for the best. The tools matter because your home’s structure matters.
Standing behind every job. If something we dried fails, we come back. Not because a warranty card says we have to, but because we’re going to run into you at the grocery store and we need to be able to look you in the eye.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed - Every professional working under our name is required to hold the license their state requires. No exceptions.
- Insured & bonded - Coverage is maintained at the levels required for residential and commercial restoration work.
- Years of local experience - Serving Bloomington and surrounding communities since 1997.
- Strong local reputation - Built on repeat calls, neighbor referrals, and the accountability that comes from living where we work.
These credentials matter because damage restoration happens in your home, often when you’re not at your most discerning. A state license means someone has verified basic competence. Insurance means if the unexpected happens, you’re not pursuing a stranger across state lines. And local experience means we know how Bloomington’s limestone-heavy soil affects basement seepage, how the humidity spikes in late July, and which neighborhoods built before 1960 are prone to galvanized pipe failures. That knowledge changes how we approach your job.
Rooted in the Communities We Serve
Locally started in Bloomington, Indiana, and this remains our home base. From here, we’ve grown into a family of trusted brands serving communities across multiple states. Each office is owner-operated, with a local address you can drive to and an owner whose name and face are published on every page. We hire in the towns where we work, buy supplies from the same hardware stores our customers use, and sponsor the same Little League teams we might see on a Saturday afternoon. The truck that comes to your door carries a local name because it is a local business. That is the entire point of the name. We are called Locally because that is the question homeowners ask out loud when they are deciding whether to trust someone with their home.
Written by the team at Locally, serving Bloomington since 1997. Call us at (866) 624-5122, Monday through Sunday, 7:00 AM to 8:00 PM.