Massachusetts · Rhode Island · Connecticut · New Hampshire · Maine
The run people use every day, and the one they notice the moment it moves.
Price your project →People climb steps without looking at them. A riser that differs from the one below by even a small amount is what catches a toe, and it is the single most common defect in residential stonework.
A granite tread that rocks was bedded badly. A tread that holds water ices over, and a front walk is where that matters most.
A pre-war house often has granite steps that were fine at forty-five and are a fall risk at eighty — worn noses, a pitched walk, no landing at the door. Rebuilding that run is a different job from replacing it, and usually a smaller one.
A door needs somewhere to stand before it opens. A step straight onto a threshold is the arrangement people fall from while holding something.
Every wall and patio we have taken apart failed for one of these five reasons. They are most of what separates a job that looks right at twenty years from one that does not make five.
Compacted gravel, deep enough for the ground it sits in. Every course above copies the first one, and so does every mistake in it.
New England ground moves in winter. A footing poured above the frost line lifts with it, and the wall on top of it cracks — not that winter, usually the third one.
Saturated soil expands about nine percent when it freezes, against something that cannot move. Clean stone, fabric, and a pipe run out to daylight.
A tooled joint sheds water off the face of the stone. A joint struck flush holds it there, and held water is what freezes.
The top takes the weather and everything anyone sets on it. Pitched away, set solid, joints tight.
If something we built moves, cracks or fails in the first year because of how it was built, we come back and fix it. No argument, no invoice.
Trace the job on a satellite view of your own property, or send a photograph, and the page prices it. The on-site visit is free and it is what makes it exact.