This one came to us the way most fire jobs do: through a restoration contractor working on behalf of the homeowner's insurance claim. A fire had torn through the garage and into the roof structure of a family home in the GTA. The house was saveable — the framing was structurally sound — but every stud, joist, truss and sheet of sheathing on that side of the house was coated in char and soot, and the whole building smelled like the fire was still burning.
Demolition crews had already gutted the drywall and insulation. Our job was the part between demo and rebuild: strip the burned layer off the wood so the structure could be inspected, deodorized, sealed and built back. That's dry ice blasting territory, and it's some of the most satisfying work we do.
What the crew walked into
The photos above are the before: sheathing burned black, charred truss chords overhead, soot driven into every face of the framing. You can't paint over this and you can't just wash it. Soot is acidic and oily, char keeps off-gassing that smoke smell for years, and an insurer won't close the file until the burned material is verifiably removed and the wood underneath is shown to be sound.
Why dry ice instead of sanding or soda
No water. The structure had already been soaked once by the fire department. Driving more moisture into open framing means mould risk and weeks of drying time. Dry ice pellets flash from solid to gas on impact — the wood stays dry.
No grit to clean up. Sand or soda blasting inside a house leaves spent media packed into wall cavities, ductwork and floor gaps. With CO2, the only thing on the floor afterward is the soot that came off, and it gets swept and vacuumed out.
It reaches what sanding can't. Truss webs, nail plates, the gaps between doubled studs, the underside of roof sheathing — the blast stream cleans profiles that would take a hand sander weeks, without eating into sound wood the way aggressive grinding does.
We covered the mechanics in what is dry ice blasting if you want the full explanation of how frozen CO2 pops contamination off a surface.
The result
Blasting took the framing back to clean, bright wood — you can see the grain again in the after shots. That matters for more than looks: it lets the engineer and the adjuster see exactly which members are sound and which few needed replacement. Once the wood was clean and deodorized, a white encapsulating sealer went over the blasted surfaces to lock in any residual odour, which is the white finish you see in the photos.
Room by room, the house went from smelling like a campfire to smelling like a job site again. Ceilings, joist bays and wall framing through the affected rooms were blasted and sealed, and the rebuild crew moved in behind us to insulate and board.
If you're dealing with fire damage
Restoration contractors and insurance adjusters: we run this as a trade under your restoration scope, arriving with our own equipment and containment. Homeowners: if your restoration company hasn't mentioned dry ice blasting for the framing, ask — or send us photos of the damage and we'll tell you honestly whether blasting is the right call and what it would run. Our crews are mobile across Toronto & the GTA, and fire work moves to the front of the schedule because we know a family and an insurer are waiting on it.