Hear from Our Customers
The cracked walkway you’ve been stepping around for two winters stops being a liability. The retaining wall that’s been leaning toward your yard stops being a question of when, not if. That sloped corner of your property that’s never been usable becomes somewhere you can actually put a patio table. That’s what good masonry work does it solves real problems and adds real function to the way you live outside.
For Upper Chichester homeowners, the climate makes this more urgent than most people realize. Delaware County sees roughly 90 freeze-thaw cycles a year. Water finds its way into every small crack in a mortar joint or stone surface, freezes, expands, and widens that crack just a little more. Over the 50 to 70 years that most homes in Upper Chichester have been standing, that process has happened hundreds of times. The masonry on a 1960s ranch home isn’t just old it’s been through a lot, and patching the surface without addressing the underlying issue just delays the next repair bill.
The other thing that changes is the stress of managing it. No chasing someone down after the deposit clears. No wondering if the crew is coming back. No discovering that the drainage wasn’t accounted for after the first heavy rain. When the work is done with the right materials, the right base prep, and the right drainage design from the start, you don’t think about it again for decades.
We’re based in Aston which shares a ZIP code, a school district, and a township line with Upper Chichester’s Twin Oaks community. When we take on a project in Upper Chichester or along the Naamans Creek corridor, we’re not driving in from another county and guessing at local conditions. We know the terrain, the housing stock, and what Delaware County winters actually do to masonry that wasn’t installed with freeze-thaw in mind.
We’ve been operating in this area for over 15 years. That kind of track record in a market where contractor complaints are common isn’t something you fake. It means real people in Upper Chichester have had real work done and trusted us enough to call again or send a neighbor our way.
One team handles your project start to finish. No subcontractor handoffs. No crew changes mid-job. The same people who design the drainage plan are the ones installing it and the ones cleaning up when it’s done.
It starts with a site visit. Before anything is quoted, we look at the actual conditions the slope of the yard, how water moves across the property, what the existing masonry is doing and why. For a lot of Upper Chichester properties, especially the older homes built in the mid-20th century, that assessment tells us more than the homeowner expected. A walkway that looks like it just needs repointing sometimes has a drainage issue underneath that will crack the new work within a few winters if it isn’t addressed first.
From there, you get a written proposal with a specific scope, a real start date, and a realistic completion window. Not a vague range. Not “sometime in the spring.” A timeline we’re committing to. Upper Chichester Township requires building permits for most masonry and hardscaping work, and projects over 750 square feet trigger additional grading and stormwater management review we handle that permit process on our end so you don’t have to navigate the township’s third-party UCC agency yourself.
Once work begins, the same crew stays on the job through completion. Materials are selected for Delaware County’s climate low water absorption rates, proper mortar formulation, drainage built into every retaining wall and patio base. When we’re done, we walk the finished project with you before we leave. You shouldn’t have to wonder if something was done correctly.
Ready to get started?
Masonry work covers a wide range of what can go wrong and what can be made better on a residential property. For Upper Chichester homeowners, the most common requests fall into a few categories: retaining walls on sloped lots where Naamans Creek drainage patterns create real grade management challenges, patio installations on properties where the backyard has never been fully usable, walkway and step repair on homes where the original 1950s or 1960s brick and concrete has reached the end of its service life, and mortar repointing on older surfaces where freeze-thaw damage has opened up the joints enough to let water in at a damaging rate.
Beyond those core services, concrete curbing is a practical solution for Upper Chichester homeowners who are tired of the ongoing battle between lawn edges and landscape beds. It eliminates the weekly re-edging, keeps mulch where it belongs, and also does quiet work as a drainage guide directing surface water away from foundations. Decorative gravel installation is another service that sounds simple but gets mishandled constantly as a DIY project. Without the right weed barrier, proper depth, and containment edging, gravel migrates into lawns and becomes a maintenance problem rather than a solution.
Whether you’re dealing with a retaining wall that’s been quietly failing for years or you’re ready to finally build out the outdoor space your property has always had room for, the scope gets built around what your property actually needs not a standard package.
Yes, in most cases. Upper Chichester Township enforces the Pennsylvania Uniform Construction Code through a third-party agency, and building permits are required for the majority of masonry and hardscaping projects. If your project reaches 750 square feet or more which a mid-sized patio or retaining wall often does it also triggers grading and stormwater management requirements under the township’s code. Retaining walls on sloped properties may require additional documentation under the township’s Steep Slope Conservation District provisions, and any excavation or grading work falls under its own regulated chapter.
This isn’t something you need to figure out on your own. A legitimate masonry contractor working in Upper Chichester should know these requirements and handle the permit application process as part of the job. If a contractor you’re talking to doesn’t mention permits or tells you the project doesn’t need one without verifying it, that’s worth paying attention to. Permitted work protects you legally and gives you documentation that the job was inspected and completed to code which matters when you sell the property.
Costs vary based on material, size, and site conditions, but here are honest ballpark figures for this area. Stone patio installation in Delaware County typically runs $30 to $50 per square foot installed, depending on the material Pennsylvania bluestone and natural fieldstone sit at the higher end of that range, while concrete pavers come in lower. Retaining walls generally run $20 to $25 per square foot, though walls on significantly sloped lots or those requiring drainage engineering can push higher. Masonry repair work repointing, step repair, walkway resetting typically falls in the $500 to $2,500 range for small to mid-sized jobs.
What’s worth understanding is that the cheapest quote is often the most expensive long-term outcome. A patio installed without proper base prep and drainage in Upper Chichester’s freeze-thaw climate will need attention within five to seven years. A retaining wall built without adequate drainage behind it is already failing you just can’t see it yet. The price difference between a job done right and a job done cheap is real, but so is the difference in how long it lasts.
Deteriorated mortar joints are the most common issue by a wide margin. The ranch homes, Cape Cods, and split-levels that make up most of Upper Chichester’s housing stock were built between the 1930s and 1970s. The mortar holding together their brick walkways, stone walls, and concrete steps has been through somewhere between 50 and 90 years of Delaware County winters. At roughly 90 freeze-thaw cycles per year, that’s thousands of expansion and contraction events working on every joint. By the time a homeowner notices the mortar is crumbling, water has usually been getting in for a while.
The repair called repointing or tuckpointing involves removing the deteriorated mortar to a sufficient depth and replacing it with new mortar that’s properly matched to the existing material. This is where a lot of contractors cut corners: using the wrong mortar formulation on older brick can actually cause more damage than leaving it alone, because modern high-strength mortars are harder than historic brick and force movement into the brick face rather than the joint. Getting the mortar mix right for the age and type of material you’re working with is a detail that matters.
Timeline depends heavily on the scope of the project. A walkway repair or repointing job on a single feature might take one to two days. A full patio installation with base prep, drainage, and stone setting typically runs three to five days for an average-sized project. A retaining wall with drainage engineering can take a week or more depending on the length and height. These are working days weather delays happen, especially in Pennsylvania, but a contractor giving you a written timeline should be accounting for reasonable contingencies.
As for timing, spring is the highest-demand window in Upper Chichester. Homeowners come out of winter, see what the freeze-thaw cycles did to their walkways and walls, and call in March and April but reputable contractors are often booked two to three months out by then. Fall is the second-best window, both for availability and for getting repairs done before another winter makes existing damage worse. If you’re planning a spring project, requesting an estimate in January or February puts you in a much better position to get the start date you want.
A few signs point toward repair: isolated mortar joint deterioration, minor surface spalling, or small areas of displacement that haven’t affected the wall’s overall alignment. If the wall is still plumb and the drainage behind it is functioning meaning you’re not seeing water pooling at the base or saturated soil pushing against the face targeted repair is often sufficient.
Replacement becomes the right call when the wall has shifted out of plumb by more than an inch or two, when sections are visibly bowing or leaning, or when the base has settled unevenly. In Upper Chichester, the most common reason retaining walls reach this point isn’t age alone it’s drainage failure. Walls built without adequate drainage behind them accumulate hydrostatic pressure over years, and that pressure eventually wins. If the original wall didn’t have gravel backfill, weep holes, or perforated pipe drainage, replacing it without correcting the drainage design just means the new wall will eventually face the same problem. Any retaining wall replacement in this area should include a drainage solution as part of the scope, not as an optional add-on.
That’s a fair question to ask. There are a handful of masonry contractors with Upper Chichester addresses and if one of them has done work in your neighborhood with verified reviews and a track record you can confirm, they’re worth talking to. What you’re really evaluating isn’t the address on the business listing. It’s whether the contractor has been operating continuously in this area long enough to have a real reputation, whether they’re registered with the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office as required under the Home Improvement Consumer Protection Act, whether they carry insurance, and whether the people who hired them before you had a good experience and would hire them again.
We’ve been working in Aston and the surrounding Upper Chichester area for over 15 years. Our base of operations is less than five minutes from Twin Oaks. The team is the same crew that shows up on day one and finishes the job no subcontractors, no handoffs. And the permit process, the material selection for Delaware County’s climate, and the drainage design are all handled as standard parts of the job, not as upsells. If you’re comparing quotes, those are the things worth asking every contractor on your list.
