Bluestone Front Entrance and Steps

Irregular bluestone landing and steps with stone riser walls rising to the front door of a brick house, with lanterns and planters on the treads — Bluestone Front Entrance and Steps

Service: Walkways & Steps
Material: Bluestone with stone riser walls

What the job involved

Irregular bluestone landing laid and fitted by hand
Bluestone treads on stone riser walls rising to the door
Stone-faced cheek walls carried up alongside the run

Irregular bluestone is slower to lay than anything manufactured, because every piece is cut to its neighbours rather than dropped into a pattern. The landing here is the part that shows it: the joints run in no repeating direction and no two pieces are the same, which is the whole reason to use the material and the reason it cannot be hurried.

The treads are full width and the risers are consistent from the bottom of the run to the top. That consistency is what your feet are reading as you climb, whether or not you notice it, and it is the thing that goes wrong when steps are patched rather than rebuilt.

The cheek walls carried up alongside the steps are structural before they are decorative — they hold the grade back on either side of the run so the steps are not left standing free with soil washing against them. They also give you somewhere to stand a lantern.

Recent work