DreamScapes Masonry and Concrete
Walls that fix the slope, frame the space, and give everybody a place to sit.
Around Baltimore the yard usually slopes, and everything you want to build needs flat. A retaining wall is how a hillside becomes a patio, how a washed out bank becomes a planting bed, how a pool gets a level deck. We build them in natural stone with proper footing, drainage behind the wall, and caps that finish the top, because a wall that moves is not a wall, it is a future project.
The best seats in a backyard are usually built into it. A curved seat wall around a fire pit or along a patio edge puts everyone at conversation distance, defines the room, and never needs cushions dragged in before the rain. Cap them wide, light them from below, and the wall does three jobs at once.
Rules of thumb vary by county, but the honest answer is that height, soil and what sits above the wall decide it together, a driveway above a four footer is a different animal than lawn above it. We tell you plainly when your wall crosses into engineered territory and price it that way from the start.
Water, almost every time. Soil holds rain, wet soil weighs double, and a wall without drainage behind it is holding a lake. Gravel backfill, drain pipe and weep paths are not extras, they are the wall.
That is our favorite kind. Eighteen to twenty inches tall, a flat cap fourteen plus inches deep, and suddenly a fire pit fits twelve people with no furniture bill.
Free consultations, no pressure. Call, tell us what you're dreaming about, and we'll walk the yard with you.
(443) 617-4321