Steps & Stairs in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.

Nothing gives a stone contractor away faster than a run of steps. We survey the grade across rocky headland and open-ocean frontage south of Portland, calculate the run so the risers divide evenly, and set every tread to that number — no fudging the last step at the top, which is the classic tell of a rushed job.

The foot notices a riser off by a quarter inch even when the eye does not. On garden stairs we keep risers low and treads generous, so the climb feels like part of the walk.

We would rather explain the number than defend it. In Cape Elizabeth, the swing factors are access, excavation depth over granite and metamorphic ledge under thin coastal soil, drainage, and protection of what is already growing on the property — the stone itself is rarely the deciding line.

You get an itemized scope after we walk the property — what is included, what is not, and where the money actually goes. No allowances that quietly become change orders halfway through.

Cape Elizabeth is Portland’s estate coast, built on the same ledge as its famous lighthouses — new stonework here is founded on rock and built for the open Atlantic.

Steps rarely exist alone — we tie them into the walkway, wall, and terrace they connect, in Two Lights, Shore Road, and Delano Park and across Cape Elizabeth, so the stair reads as part of the landscape rather than a separate purchase.

A job in Cape Elizabeth is a few weeks of trucks, machines, and people in your yard. We plan staging and protection before day one — drive plates, root-zone protection, a defined material area — and leave the site clean each evening rather than at the end.

A large share of our Maine work is executing drawings for landscape architects — reading elevations, holding the specified batter and joint, and flagging a conflict before it becomes a change order. Much of it in ongoing collaboration with Jonathan Keep Landscape Design.