Concrete Patios

Concrete Patios in Libertyville, IL

Patios, walkways and steps poured across Libertyville and the surrounding villages. Broom, exposed aggregate, colour or stamped, with the join to the house worked out before anyone quotes. A written estimate at the property, free.

Book my estimate

A patio is the rare piece of building work that pays you back immediately and then asks for almost nothing. Poured properly, with the fall right and the joints where they belong, it will still be the part of the garden you use most in twenty years, and you will have done nothing to it in between but sweep.

What the work includes

• A patio scaled to how you will use it, rather than to a number somebody guessed from the doorway.
• Whichever finish you settle on, costed side by side with the others while you are still deciding.
• Paths running from the driveway round to the back door, and out to the gate.
• Steps and a landing, where the garden sits below the door.
• An enlargement of a patio that was built too small the first time.

From first call to finished slab

Why local matters here

• You approve the size on the ground. Standing inside the marked outline answers the question far better than looking at a plan on a screen.
• Where a permit applies, we identify and file it. Requirements differ between these villages, particularly near a boundary, and that is our problem to track.
• Flatwork only, said plainly. No roofs, no rooms, no built-in kitchens. If one is planned for later, tell us now, because it changes the slab.

Where a patio can and cannot go

A garden slab is far less regulated than anything at the street, and it is not unregulated. Four things can constrain where it sits, and all four are cheaper to find out about before an outline is pegged than after.

• How close it can come to a boundary. Set by your village rather than by the county, so it is a question with a specific answer for a specific address.
• How much of the lot is already hard surface. Some properties have less headroom here than their owners expect, particularly where a drive has been widened.
• What runs underneath. An easement across the rear of a plot is not somewhere to put permanent concrete, and it does not show up on the grass.
• Your association, where you have one. A separate approval on a separate timetable, judged on appearance rather than construction.

We check the first three as part of the estimate and tell you plainly where the fourth applies. What we will not do is guess at a figure for a village we have not confirmed it for.

If what you are planning is actually a deck

Worth drawing the line clearly, because this is where enquiries most often cross it.

A patio sits on prepared ground, unanchored, and takes a little seasonal movement rather than standing against it. A raised deck is the opposite kind of object: it has to be founded, which here means poured piers taken below the depth the ground freezes to, and the Village publishes both the diameter and the depth.

We pour piers. We do not build decks. If a deck is what you want, you need a carpenter and you may also need us, and knowing which part belongs to whom before either of us starts saves the week where two trades are each waiting on the other. The numbers and the sequence are in piers, and what we pour for a deck.

Villages we cover

Libertyville itself, with Green Oaks alongside, Vernon Hills and Mundelein west and south, then Lake Forest and Lake Bluff nearer the shore. Garden work leans much less on which village you are in than driveway work does, though soil and access differ from one garden to the next, so we always come out and look.

Read the detail first

The numbers, worked through in full:

• what actually moves a patio price
• how long each surface takes to build, and to become usable
• what sits underneath any slab price

Driveway due as well? We look at concrete driveway work on the same visit.