Natural stone patios, retaining walls, stairways, and paths across La Plata County. What separates a patio that lasts twenty winters from one that heaves in two is entirely below the surface.
01
Patios & terraces
Flagstone, cut stone, and paver terraces sized to how you actually use the space, not to whatever rectangle is easiest to lay. Designed for how the property functions, not just how it photographs.
02
Retaining walls
Boulder, dry-stack, and engineered block walls holding grade. Anything structural gets designed to the load, with proper drainage behind it.
03
Stairways & steps
Natural stone and slab steps set to consistent rise on sloped ground, built to stay level through freeze cycles.
04
Paths & walkways
Steppers, flagstone runs, and gravel paths connecting the property. Routed for how people move -- and for snow clearance in winter.
05
Fire pits & seating
Built-in fire features and seat walls in matching stone. Noncombustible surfaces that also serve as defensible-space fuel breaks.
06
Drainage & grading
Regrading, swales, dry creek beds, and subsurface drains. Usually the least visible part of the job, and the reason everything else holds.
Almost every cracked, lifted, or sunken patio we are called to assess in this county failed for one of three reasons, and none of them is the stone.
Frost heave. Water in the soil beneath a patio freezes, expands, and lifts everything above it. When it thaws, it settles back unevenly. After enough freeze cycles, joints open, slabs tilt, and mortar cracks. The defense is a base deep enough and free-draining enough that there is no trapped water to freeze.
Expansive soil. Parts of La Plata County have clay soils that swell when wet and shrink when dry. The county’s own building code references local soil surveys because of this. That movement happens independently of frost and destroys anything laid rigidly on top of it.
Water with nowhere to go. Snowmelt and monsoon runoff have to leave the surface. A patio built without pitch, edge drainage, or a route for subsurface water becomes a shallow reservoir that feeds the first two problems.
You cannot see the difference between a good base and a bad one on the day a patio is finished. You see it in year three.
━ Before & after
Excavation and base work require workable ground. Frozen or saturated soil cannot be compacted properly. The season decides more than the schedule does.
Projects designed in winter and early spring are the ones that get built the same year. We take a limited number of major hardscape builds annually and schedule them from the front of the year forward.
Design & scheduling
Site walks, layout, material selection, and stone sourcing. Start here.
Excavation & base
Ground workable, grading permits in hand where earthwork requires them. The unglamorous half of the job and the most important.
Stone setting
Installation of finished surfaces once the base is ready.
Planting & finish
Edges, planting, irrigation adjustments, and cleanup before the ground closes for the year.
━ Boundaries
We handle
We refer out
It is the question that separates the quotes. Walk the property with us and we will tell you what the site needs, what it will cost, and where a cheaper bid is probably saving money.
