The Cottage

A steep lakeside site, a cottage perched fifty feet above the water and a tangle of rotting timber steps connecting the two. The client wanted stone. The hillside had other ideas.
One hundred wooden steps came out. Seventy-five stone steps went in. Seventy-five feet of retaining wall built tight against the cottage in spaces barely wide enough to work. Seventy tons of stone carried in through a small driveway, around mature trees, down a grade that was too steep for a full-size machine. I worked through the fall, into the first snow of December, came back in May and finished in July.
Most of it was built solo. Some days the only sound was stone on stone and the lake below.
The finished product is exactly what it should be — stone that looks like it was always there, steps that will outlast the cottage, and a hillside that’s finally working with the property instead of against it.