Planning a stone wall or seeing worn mortar between old stones? We help you pick the right wall type, then build it or repoint it.
Stone masonry in Rancho Cucamonga is setting natural or manufactured stone into walls, fences, facing and paving, with mortar or without it, either to carry weight or just to stand on its own.
Most calls start one of two ways. You want a new stone wall along a slope or a property line, or you've got an older wall where the mortar between the stones has gone soft and crumbly. Stone wears mostly at those joints, so redoing them now and then is the upkeep any stone wall needs.
What moves the price is mostly the wall type, its length and height, the stone you pick, and on a repair, how deep the old mortar has to come out. The schedule turns on whether the city requires a permit for your wall and how soon the stone can arrive. Your written estimate puts a figure on your own wall.
It's a short path from the first call to a finished wall, and you'll know who's doing what at each step.
I've run this business since 2023, and I come out to look at your wall or your yard myself, because I'd rather you understand your own wall before you spend anything on it. Ask me whatever you want, and you'll get a written estimate that spells out the wall type, the stone and the work.
We're licensed and insured. Once you say yes, we check what the city asks for on your kind of wall, and when a permit is needed, we handle the application and line up the inspections. California sets a masonry contractor license that covers setting natural and manufactured stone in walls, fences and paving.
I run the job on site with our crew, and an experienced mason leads the stone work itself. Before we leave, we walk the finished wall with you. Satisfaction guaranteed.
Before anything else, I walk you through dry-stacked and grouted stone so you know what holds your wall together. As federal highway guidance describes it, a dry-stacked rock wall has no mortar, concrete or steel in it and stays up on the weight, size, shape and friction of the rocks, while a grouted wall gets its strength from the grout packed between them, so picking one is really picking how your wall carries itself. On older walls, we take worn mortar out by hand with chisels and hammers, because historic preservation guidance finds that slow way is, in most cases, the least likely to damage the stone.
Stone usually sits next to other masonry on a house. If your brick needs its joints redone too, that's our brick pointing work, and we can plan both together. If the trouble turns out to be under the house and not in the wall, that's foundation repair, which we also do.
Here's the order the work goes in once you've said yes and the city side is clear.
We mark the wall line where we agreed it would go and dig out the base, then pack it so the first stones sit level. Everything above depends on that first course.
We set the stone course by course, choosing each piece for how it sits on the one below. On a dry-stacked wall, that fit is the whole structure.
On a grouted wall we pack the gaps with grout, and on a repair we fill the cleaned-out joints with fresh mortar. We tool each joint so it sheds water and sits in line with the joints around it.
We brush down the stone face, clear mortar and chips out of your yard and haul off what's left. Then we look the wall over before we call it done.
Tell us what the wall is for and how tall you'd like it, and send photos of any stone that's already there. We reply within one business day, then I come out, look at it with you and send a free written estimate. There's no pressure and no obligation.
(909) 360-4010You need a building permit from the city for a masonry wall more than three feet above the lowest ground next to it, or for a retaining wall three feet or taller. I check your wall against those lines when I come out for the estimate. If your home may be a designated historic property, we'll ask you to confirm that with the city's planning office first.
Four feet is the most the city allows for a retaining wall. If you're thinking about stepping two walls up a slope, the city requires at least three feet between them, wherever they sit on your property.
Worn joints get repointed, so the old mortar comes out of each joint and fresh mortar goes in. The new mortar has to let moisture work its way out of the wall and dry off, or the stones themselves take the damage, so it's fair to ask any mason how their mortar does that before they start. On rough stone with wide joints, the old mortar may need to come out several inches deep, which makes it a bigger repair than it looks.
It can be. Federal highway guidance calls stacked rock walls a relatively inexpensive engineered way to hold back ground, with a natural look that's been catching on across the western United States. We'll talk through whether it suits your height and space when I come out.
When the city measures a retaining wall for a permit, it goes from the bottom of the footing to the top of the wall, so the part buried in the ground counts too. A wall that looks short from your patio can still come out taller on paper. The city lays out its height rules in its handout on residential fences and walls, and a lot of the yards we see here have a slope or a grade change along a property line, which is where most stone wall questions start.
We're based in Rancho Cucamonga and work across the cities around it, including Upland, Ontario, Fontana, Chino and more. Each city has its own wall rules, so we check yours before we start. If your city isn't listed, ask us.
Photos let me look at the stone and the joints before I come out, so the visit goes to your questions, and you can call (909) 360-4010 or use the contact form.
If you're still deciding what kind of stone wall you want, call or send a message and I'll talk it through with you.
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