LedgelineStoneworks

Dry stone, full-depth bluestone,and the twelve inches underneath.Rhinebeck, New York.

Joint⅜ in, swept dry. Nothing bonded.

01 / The wall

Dry-laid.

Stacked, not stuck. It moves withthe frost instead of cracking.

Batter1 in back per 12 in of rise

02 / The terrace

Full depth.

Stone the whole way through.Not a face glued to a slab.

Pitch¼ in per foot, away from the house

03 / The base

Twelve inches.

The part you never seeis the part that decides.

Base12 in compacted, in 4 in lifts

Scroll to launch experience

LedgelineStoneworks — Rhinebeck, New York

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04 / The yard

One yard.One crew.

Excavation to the last cap stone,walked end to end by the peoplewho built it.

What you were looking at

You saw the surface. The surface is the easy part.

A patio does not fail at the top. It fails underneath, in the six inches nobody photographs, where water sits and the frost gets a grip on it.

We build from the bottom. Excavate to subgrade, twelve inches of compacted base in lifts, pitch set before a single slab is cut. Then the part you can see.

That order is the whole difference. Everything above the base is finish work, and finish work cannot hold up ground that was never made to carry it.

How it goes wrong

Most yards are built by three crews who never meet each other.

The mason lays the wall, a paver contractor does the terrace, someone else comes back for lighting and has to cut into finished work to do it. Nobody owns the seams.

Ledgeline is one crew from excavation to the last cap stone. The wall and the terrace get set by the same hands in the same week, which is why the joints line up.

4projects a season

12 incompacted base, every build

1crew, excavation to cap stone