Walkways and front entries

The front walk is the piece of hardscape every visitor uses and the piece most often built to the minimum. Builders install three-foot walks because three feet is cheap, and the result is a path where two people cannot walk side by side to the door of a house they are visiting together.

Width is the decision that matters

Four feet is the practical minimum for a primary entry walk — the width at which two adults pass comfortably. Five feet is noticeably better on larger homes and costs far less to add now than to rebuild later.

Secondary paths — a route to a shed, a garden path, a side-yard connector — work fine at three feet, and spending patio money on them is not a good use of your budget. We will tell you which of your paths is which.

Pitch, and why it is not optional

Every walk needs fall away from the house, roughly a quarter-inch per foot. A walk pitched toward the foundation delivers every rainfall and every snowmelt directly to your basement wall.

This is the single most common defect we find on existing walks in this county, and it usually results from a walk being rebuilt at a slightly higher elevation than the original without the pitch being reset. If your existing walk already runs toward the house, say so — it changes the scope and it is the actual problem worth fixing.

Landings at the door

The landing at the top of a walk should be at least as deep as the door is wide, so a storm door can swing fully without anyone stepping backward off the edge. Five feet by five feet is a comfortable minimum at a standard entry.

Where the walk meets steps, the landing needs to be level rather than pitched. Pitch belongs in the walk run, not under someone's feet at a threshold.

Curves cost more, and sometimes earn it

A curved walk requires cutting every paver along both edges. That is saw time and waste, and it typically adds 15 to 25 percent to the same square footage in a straight run.

On a long approach across an open front yard a gentle curve genuinely looks better and is worth paying for. On a twelve-foot run from a driveway to a stoop, a curve is money spent on a shape nobody will notice. We will say which one you have.

Matching an existing driveway or porch

Concrete pavers are manufactured in production runs and color lots shift over time. A paver bought today will not exactly match the same product installed eight years ago, because both the pigment lot and the weathering differ.

Where a walk meets existing hardscape the honest options are a deliberate contrasting border that makes the transition look intentional, or replacing both surfaces. Pretending a new run will blend invisibly into an old one sets up a disappointment we would rather have before the work than after.