FAQ

Expect $25 to $75 per square foot of exposed wall face. Plain concrete block is the cheapest way to hold soil; veneered block costs more; full natural stone is the top of the range. The cost step is at four feet, where engineering, a permit and a larger footing all come into play. On the Palos Verdes slopes, soil conditions and access for equipment often matter more to the price than the material choice.

Poured concrete and properly mortared stone will run 50 to 100 years. Reinforced concrete block gets 40 to 60. Timber is the outlier at 15 to 20 years, since the wood sits permanently against damp soil. That said, we have replaced far more walls that failed from blocked drainage than walls that wore out, so the pipe behind the wall matters as much as the material in front of it.

Always. Soil that cannot shed water gets heavy and pushes hard, and a wall with nowhere to send that water will lean before it cracks. Every wall we build gets a gravel drainage zone, filter fabric to keep fines out of it, and a perforated pipe daylighted to somewhere sensible. We also look at what the ground above the wall does with rain, because a wall is often fixed by regrading the slope behind it.

Walls over 4 feet measured from the bottom of the footing need a permit and stamped engineering, and so does any wall carrying a surcharge such as a driveway or pool. Shorter garden walls usually do not. We check with the city as part of the quote and pull whatever is required.

A typical residential wall takes 3 to 7 days on site once we break ground. Engineering and permitting add 2 to 4 weeks ahead of that. Terraced hillside projects and walls that need heavy excavation run longer, and you get a real schedule before we start.

In most cases. Single cracked or spalled units are cut out and replaced with matched brick. Crumbling joints are raked out and repointed. Where a crack steps diagonally across several courses, something has moved, and that gets stitched with stainless helical ties after we establish why. The honest answer on an old wall is that early repair is cheap and deferred repair turns into a rebuild.

Between $5 to $25 per square foot, driven mostly by how stubborn the existing mortar is and how we have to reach the wall. Pointing a chimney or one elevation is typically a few hundred to $1,500. A full house exterior runs $2,000 to $8,000, with scaffold adding to anything above single-story reach.

Brick outlasts everyone; mortar does not. Plan on repointing joints every 25 to 30 years, sooner on walls that take driving rain or salt spray. A yearly look is enough to stay ahead of it: check the joints on the weather elevation, under the eaves, and at the base where splashback lands. Within a few blocks of the beach we would check annually without exception.

Brick veneer is a single layer of brick tied back to a framed or block wall behind it, carrying no structural load. Solid brick construction is the wall itself, two or more wythes thick. Veneer costs far less, insulates better in a modern wall assembly, and is what almost every new brick project in Redondo Beach uses.

Not always, but salt air is hard on masonry and a breathable sealer helps on walls that take direct weather. The important part is that any sealer stays vapor permeable, because a film-forming product traps moisture in the wall and does more harm than the salt would.

One is structural, one is a finish. Full-bed stone is cut three to six inches thick, weighs accordingly, and needs a footing or a supporting ledge. Veneer is one to two inches, bonded to a prepared wall, and carries no load, which is why it can be applied to existing block or framed construction. Veneer is roughly half the installed cost. Up close, the giveaway is how corners and window returns are detailed.

Granite and quartzite handle exposure best, with the harder limestones close behind. Sandstone is warmer to look at and easier to work, and it erodes faster, which shows sooner on a wall facing the ocean than on one in a sheltered courtyard. Salt air in the South Bay is the deciding factor on anything within sight of the water, and we will say so at the sample stage rather than after installation.

Less than concrete or dark pavers. Lighter sandstone and quartzite stay comfortable barefoot through most of a South Bay summer, which is why they turn up around so many pool decks here. Darker bluestone holds more heat, so we tend to steer it toward shaded patios.

Usually, yes. Palos Verdes stone has a distinctive color and coursing, and there is still material available along with close alternates. We match the coursing and the joint style as well as the rock itself, because getting the pattern wrong shows more than a slight color difference does.

A flagstone patio of average size runs 4 to 8 days including base work. A mortared stone wall takes 1 to 3 weeks depending on length and height. Dry-stack work and irregular fieldstone take longer than cut stone because the fitting is the job.

Twenty-five to fifty years is normal for a slab that got a compacted base, adequate thickness and correctly positioned reinforcement. Skip any one of those and you are looking at a decade. Stamped and integrally colored finishes need resealing every two to three years, which is about appearance rather than durability. We tell you what the maintenance will be before you pick a finish.

Cost favors concrete, flexibility favors pavers. Stamped concrete lands at $12 to $18 per square foot against $15 to $30 for pavers. Concrete gives an unbroken surface and no joints to maintain, but a crack is permanent and a repair is visible. Pavers come up and go back down, so utility trenches, settlement and stains are all fixable. Over a long ownership, pavers usually cost less to keep looking right.

Walk on it after a day or two. Stay off it with a car for a full week. The concrete keeps gaining strength for 28 days, but the meaningful restriction is that first week. We fence or tape the pour and leave you a note of the date it can take vehicle load, because an early car on a green slab is the most common cause of a cracked new driveway.

Some hairline cracking is normal shrinkage as the slab cures. Wide cracks, cracks with a height difference across them, and cracking that keeps opening usually mean the base settled, the slab was too thin for the load, or control joints were never cut. We look for the cause before quoting a repair.

The private portion of a driveway on your own property often does not need one, but the apron and any sidewalk in the public right of way does, along with a city inspection. We handle the permit and coordinate the inspection as part of the job.

Three-coat traditional stucco on a sound wall lasts 50 to 80 years, and synthetic EIFS about 20 to 30. In both systems the wall fails at the weak points long before the finish wears out: an unsealed crack, a window head with no flashing, a missing weep screed at the base. Close the cracks as they appear and a stucco wall asks almost nothing of you.

Movement and moisture. Foundations settle, framing shrinks as it dries, and the wall expands and contracts with the daily temperature swing, which is significant on a west-facing elevation here. A poorly proportioned or overworked mix is more prone to it. Hairlines finer than a sixteenth of an inch are cosmetic. Wider than that, or with a stain trailing below, means water is getting behind the finish.

Full remediation, which means stripping to the sheathing, replacing paper and flashing, repairing any wet framing and rebuilding the coats, costs $8 to $12 per square foot. A patch and recoat on an otherwise sound wall is far less. We cut a test opening and look at the substrate before quoting, because the difference between the two is entirely hidden until you do.

In almost every case, yes. We sample the texture on a small hidden area and adjust the mix and the application until it matches, then blend the color. Lace, dash, sand float and smooth finishes all get matched by hand rather than out of a bag.

It is. Coastal properties in Redondo Beach see faster color fade, more efflorescence, and corrosion of the lath and any exposed fasteners. Walls on the ocean side of a house typically need attention sooner than the sheltered elevations, which is worth knowing before you recoat the whole building.

The units themselves are good for 25 to 50 years, whether concrete or clay. What decides where you land in that range is the base: depth of aggregate, how well it was compacted, and whether the edges were properly restrained. Any single paver can be lifted and replaced years later, so localized damage never means redoing the whole surface.

Sealing is a choice, not a requirement. Applied every two to three years it resists oil and tannin stains, slows UV fading and stiffens the joint sand against weeds. Skip it on a shaded side path. Consider it on a driveway, a pool surround or an outdoor dining area, where the things that stain pavers actually get spilled.

For most driveways here, pavers are the better long-term surface. They sit on a flexible base, so soil movement and tree roots show up as a slightly raised joint rather than a crack running the length of the slab, and individual sections can be lifted and reset dead level again. The open joints also let rain soak in instead of sheeting toward the street. Concrete remains the cheaper option up front.

Very little, if the joints are filled with polymeric sand and the surface is swept and topped up occasionally. Most weeds in a paver field germinate in debris that has collected in the joints rather than growing up from below, so keeping the surface clean does most of the work.

Sometimes. If the slab is sound, drains properly, and the extra height works at doors and thresholds, an overlay is faster and cheaper than removal. If it is cracked, sinking or holding water, the slab comes out first.

A straightforward built-in with a grill, counter run and storage starts at $5,000 to $15,000. A fuller build with a stone-faced island, pizza oven, sink and refrigeration sits at $20,000 to $50,000 and climbs from there. Appliance selection usually accounts for the biggest swing, and the second is how far gas, water and electrical have to be run from the house.

Granite remains the safest choice: heat tolerant, UV stable and easy to clean. Porcelain slab is now a strong alternative and holds its color under direct sun. Cast concrete lets us form any profile you want and needs resealing periodically. Marble etches and stains outdoors and wood simply does not last, so we steer clear of both.

Yes, and they are one of the stronger performers in exterior work, usually returning 60 to 80 percent of cost at resale. In the South Bay, where a yard is usable nearly year round, a built-in kitchen reads to buyers as extra square footage. A restrained island detailed to match the house recovers more than an oversized one that dominates the yard.

Anything with a gas line or electrical connection needs a permit and an inspection, and so does a fireplace with a flue. Free-standing wood burning pits often do not, though local air quality rules can apply. We check with the city and pull whatever the build requires.

A straightforward fire pit takes 3 to 5 days. A BBQ island runs 1 to 2 weeks. A full outdoor kitchen with a fireplace or pizza oven takes 2 to 4 weeks, and a masonry oven needs additional curing time before its first real fire.

Yes, and it is a large share of what we do. We work as a masonry subcontractor on ground-up and tenant improvement projects, and directly for property managers and HOAs on repair and site work. We carry commercial general liability and workers compensation, and certificates go out with the proposal.

Yes. Retail and office sites often need the noisy or access-blocking work done at night or on weekends, and we schedule around trading hours where the site requires it. It affects the price and we say so up front rather than after.

We file the permit, manage plan check and submittals, and schedule inspections directly with the city. Structural block work has inspection holds at specific points and we build those into the sequence so the schedule does not slip waiting on a sign-off.

A general contractor holds the overall contract and coordinates every trade on the job. We are the masonry trade within that, handling block, brick, stone, concrete and stucco packages. On commercial work we are usually engaged as a subcontractor under a GC, and occasionally direct by an owner or property manager where masonry is the entire scope. Either arrangement is routine for us.

Yes. For managed portfolios we walk the sites, put together a single itemized list covering every building, and price it as one proposal. That is usually meaningfully cheaper than treating each item as its own call-out, and it makes budgeting straightforward.