Bluestone terrace with a curved stone seat wall and a lit fire pit at golden hour
Outdoor living & hardscape · Est. 2004

Your best nights
are spent outside.

We build outdoor rooms from stone, fire, and water. Patios laid by hand, walls set to last a century, kitchens that pull the whole yard together.

21
Years building
640+
Projects set
30yr
Structural warranty
1
Crew, start to finish

Figures above are illustrative and written for a fictional company.

01 · What we build

Patios, walls, kitchens, and fire.

Every element is engineered together, from the base course to the last capstone, so the finished space reads as one landscape and not a set of parts.

Clay paver terrace laid in herringbone with a sawn bluestone border
01

Patios & walkways

Bluestone, clay pavers, and dry-laid flagstone set on a compacted, free-draining base. Patterns cut to the site so water moves away and the surface stays true through every freeze.

BluestoneClay paverFlagstone
Dry stacked fieldstone retaining wall holding a terraced garden
02

Retaining walls

Engineered gravity and reinforced walls that hold a grade and make room where there was none. Proper drainage, geogrid, and a batter cut so the wall leans into the hill it carries.

GravityGeogridNatural stone
Built-in masonry outdoor kitchen with stone veneer base and granite counter
03

Outdoor kitchens

Full masonry counters framed for grill, burner, and sink, finished in stone veneer with a solid stone or poured cap. Gas, water, and power run before the first block is set.

Masonry baseStone capGas & water
Circular stone fire pit burning low inside a curved seat wall at dusk
04

Fire & water features

Wood or gas fire pits, seat walls that circle the flame, and low-maintenance water features tuned for sound. Built as anchors so the whole space gathers around them after dark.

Fire pitSeat wallSpillway basin
02 · The stone

Every yard gets the stone it can carry.

Four surfaces cover most of what leaves our yard. We bring full pieces to your site and wet them down on your grade, so you see the color in your own light instead of under a showroom lamp.

Thermal finish bluestone slab surface, blue grey with buff mottling

Pennsylvania bluestone

Dense, cold-hardy, and it grips underfoot when wet. Our default for terraces, treads, and pool coping.

Full color · thermal or natural cleft
Tumbled clay pavers laid tight in a herringbone pattern

Tumbled clay paver

Fired color that never fades out of the body of the brick. Warm on an old house, and a single unit is easy to lift and reset.

Herringbone · running bond · basket
Dry stacked New England fieldstone wall face with lichen

New England fieldstone

Glacial stone pulled from local walls and quarries. Rounded, lichened, and the reason walls here look like they grew out of the hill.

Dry stack · mortared · veneer
Split face grey granite step edge with a sawn flat top

Split granite

Steps, curbing, and wall caps in stone that shrugs off a plow blade. Heavy to set once, then it sits for generations.

Slab steps · caps · edging
A mason's hands setting a bluestone paver into a sand bed with a rubber mallet

Set one stone wrong and the next forty spend the week arguing with it.Owen Marek · Founder

Built to outlast us

A wall is only as honest as the base beneath it.

Most of a Fieldstone wall is the part you never see. We over-excavate, compact in lifts, and build drainage into the structure so frost has nowhere to lift and water has somewhere to go. What shows above grade is the easy part.

  • 01 Compacted aggregate base, built up in six-inch lifts
  • 02 Perforated drain and clean stone behind every course
  • 03 Geogrid tiebacks anchored into undisturbed soil
  • 04 Hand-set stone face, capped and pinned to hold
Excavated patio base with compacted gravel lifts, screed rails, and a drainage trench
The week nobody photographs
03 · The process

Slow where it counts, sure the whole way.

One crew carries the job from the first walk of the property to the last capstone. Nobody hands your yard off halfway through.

1

Walk the land

We visit the site, read the grade and drainage, and talk through how you actually want to live outside. No two yards move water the same way.

2

Draw the plan

A measured site plan and stone selections, priced in full. You see the layout, the materials, and the number before anyone breaks ground.

3

Set the base

Excavation, utilities, and compacted base. The unglamorous weeks that decide whether the finish work holds for one season or thirty years.

4

Lay the stone

Hand-set surfaces, walls, and features by one crew from start to finish. We clean the site, walk it with you, and stand behind it.

04 · Selected projects

Ground we have set.

Four recent builds across the valley, photographed after the crew pulled out and the plantings filled in.

Walled stone courtyard at blue hour with a fire table and lit wall faces

The Marlow Courtyard

Havermere, CT · Bluestone, fieldstone, gas fire
Patio + fire
Flagstone walkway with granite slab steps rising to a house entry

The Halcott Approach

Wren Valley, NH
Walkway
Pool surround in bluestone with a raised stone spillway wall

Willowbank Pool Surround

Kettle Falls, VT
Pool + water
Granite spillway sheeting water into a stone basin among ferns

Fern Run Spillway

Stonebridge, MA
Water feature
Finished stone terrace and low wall in late autumn with frost on the lawn

Stone is set for the winters, not for the afternoon it is photographed.Havermere · Litchfield · the river towns

05 · The build season

The calendar decides more than we do.

Frost sets our schedule, so the yards we build in June are usually drawn in February. Here is how a year runs, and when it makes sense to call.

January to March

Drawing season

Site visits on frozen ground, plans drawn, stone selected, and the spring calendar filled. The quietest weeks to reach us.

April to June

Break ground

Excavation and base work start as soon as the frost is out. Most spring slots are spoken for by the end of March.

July to September

Full build

The long stretch. Patios, walls, kitchens, and features set back to back while the weather holds and the ground stays dry.

October to December

Close out

Final grading, seeding, fire features, and winter prep. Work continues until the ground turns, then we draw again.

Seasonal timing described here is illustrative and written for a fictional company in a cold-winter climate.

06 · What it runs

Where these builds usually land.

Stone work carries a real number, and finding that out on a third visit helps nobody. These are the ranges most of our projects fall inside, so you can tell early whether the scope you have in mind matches the budget you have in mind.

Patio or walkway
$18,000 to $45,000

A 400 to 800 square foot terrace or an entry walk with steps. Excavation, base, drainage, edging, and hand-set stone.

Walls & grading
$220 to $340 per face foot

Engineered retaining and seat walls, priced by the square foot of exposed face. Drainage, geogrid, and caps included.

Full outdoor room
$85,000 to $220,000

Terrace, walls, kitchen, fire, lighting, and planting beds carried as one build across a single season.

Ranges are illustrative and written for a fictional company. A real number would follow a site visit, a soil and drainage read, and a drawn plan.

07 · What we stand behind

Thirty winters is the only real test.

Freeze and thaw find every shortcut eventually. We write down what we cover so you know which failures are ours to fix and which are simply stone doing what stone does.

Structure

Thirty years

Settlement, heave, and wall movement caused by our base, drainage, or reinforcement. If the ground under our work fails, we take it apart and rebuild it.

Workmanship

Ten years

Joints, edges, caps, and set stone. Loose caps get re-pinned, lifted units get reset, and polymeric joints get topped up.

Not covered

Plainly stated

Natural color change and lichen, damage from plows or de-icing salt, staining from planters and grills, and anything a later contractor cuts into.

Warranty terms shown here are illustrative and written for a fictional company.

08 · In their words

What people say a few winters later.

Four freezes in and the terrace is still dead flat. Our old patio had lifted by the second spring, which is how we ended up calling somebody who talks about drainage before pattern.
Fire court · Havermere, CT
They dug for eight days before a single wall stone went down, and I will admit I wondered what we were paying for. Then I saw the wall in March, sitting exactly where they left it.
Hillside terraces · Stonebridge, MA

Quotations are illustrative and written for a fictional company.

09 · Before the first shovel

Answers we give at the kitchen table.

How long does a project take on site?
A patio of four to eight hundred square feet runs two to three weeks on site. A full outdoor room with walls, a kitchen, and a fire feature runs six to ten. Roughly a third of that time is excavation and base, before anything looks like progress.
What does the yard look like while you are working?
Rough. There is a spoil pile, a stone drop, and machine tracks across the lawn. We fence the work zone, protect the drive with plywood and mats, and repair the lawn as part of the job rather than leaving it as a line item at the end.
Do you handle permits and the excavation?
Yes. We pull the permits, call in the utility markouts, and run our own excavation and grading. Walls above four feet get stamped drawings from an engineer we work with, priced into the plan rather than added later.
How do payments work?
A deposit holds your place in the season, a material draw comes due when stone is delivered, and progress payments follow completed phases. The final payment is due after the walkthrough. Every stage is written into the plan before we start.
Can you work alongside our landscape designer?
Often, and it usually makes for a better yard. We build to another designer's drawings regularly, and we will flag the details that will not survive a New England winter before they reach the cut list.
What upkeep does stone work actually need?
Less than most people expect. Sweep the joints, top up polymeric sand every few years on paver work, keep de-icing salt off natural stone, and let fieldstone gather lichen. We walk you through it at handover and leave the notes with you.
10 · Start a build

Let's walk your
ground together.

Tell us about the space and how you want to use it. We will visit, read the site, and come back with a plan and a real number.

Yard
184 Quarry Road, Havermere, CT
Phone
(860) 555-0142
Email
build@fieldstone.example
Season
Booking spring & summer 2026
Request a consult
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