Archive for May, 2010

Kickin’ Back on Your Long Island Patio

A Long Island patio is one of the most valuable and satisfying home improvements you can make, but building it can be a big and expensive job, especially if you don’t have the right mason working for you.

A properly designed, built, and maintained patio can allow for so many activities your family will enjoy.  It can be used as a place to entertain family and friends.  It can be used as a container garden for those with limited backyard space but boundless appetite for homegrown fruits and vegetables.  It can also double as a deck for a pool. 

The sky is the limit on what you can do with your Long Island patio, but several things can go wrong with the building and maintenance of it.  If the foundation is not properly poured, the patio above it can become unlevel as parts of the foundation start to settle and sink.  Also, if proper drainage is not utilized in a nearby pool, it can erode away the dirt underneath the foundation, again causing problems down the line. 

A skilled mason such as those at Rock Vine Masonry will anticipate all of these potential problems and will counter them in the development and building process to keep such events from occurring in the future.

 If you want to make a Long Island patio your next New York masonry project, come to the professionals.  Come to Rock Vine Masonry.

Keep the New York Fireplace Burning

A luxury that most New Yorkers would love to have in their home is a fireplace. If it is feasible to do so, a New York fireplace can add to the value of your home, and it can help keep it warm in the winter time. Make a fireplace your next Long Island masonry project.

There are essentially two types of fireplaces: wood-burning and gas-burning. The wood-burning fireplace is the more traditional fireplace, and requires a mason-crafted chimney running up to the roof. While this can add to the aesthetics of the outside of the house, this may not be feasible given the structure of the home as well as for budgetary reasons.

The gas-burning fireplace has a couple of advantages over traditional wood-burning fireplaces. One has already been stated: it does not require a chimney. Gas fires are smokeless; this means ventilation to the outside of the house is not needed. The other advantage is the ease of starting a fire. It is just like turning on a burner on a gas stove. With traditional wood-burning fireplaces the wood has to be ignited. This can be a slow process.

If you’re not sure which fireplace would be best for you, why not get a quote for the kind of work both would need? Come to Rock Vine Masonry, and we’ll get started on the New York masonry project that’s right for you. That way this Christmas season you can turn the TV off the burning Yule Log station and set fire to your own Yule Log in your own, newly-crafted brick and stone fireplace.

Build Your Field of Dreams with New York Landscape Design from Rock Vine Masonry

Already have the home of your dreams?  Well, now it’s time to start on the yard of your dreams.  Achieve this with a quality New York landscape designer such as Rock Vine Masonry.

The landscape designers at Rock Vine masonry will take your property’s natural environment into account when making the initial design, as well as your desires.  If you have hilly property that you want made completely level for optimum use as a garden or field for your children to play, then we can level it off for you. 

Likewise, if you want the effect of rolling hills or “overgrown” areas that you would find out in the woods, we can make that happen, too.  From the look of a city garden to the feel of chaotic nature, we have been satisfying customers’ individual tastes and preferences for more than 25 years.

Let Rock Vine Masonry come out to your property and see what we can do to improve it.