Interlocking
Walkways, entrances, landings and paved surfaces set on a base built for freeze-thaw.
Landscape construction · Thornhill, Ontario
Ground that holds its line
Interlocking driveways, patios, walkways, retaining walls and fencing built the way they have to be built for Ontario ground — excavated properly, drained properly, and restrained at every edge.
What we do
Exterior work that has to survive a Canadian winter
Most of what fails on a driveway, a patio or a wall in the GTA fails below the surface, and it fails in the first week of the job rather than the fifth winter. Water with nowhere to go, a base compacted in one pass instead of in lifts, an edge with nothing holding it. On a scope that has to hold a level line across a whole frontage, or meet an architect's drawn detail at a threshold, those are what show up later as a settled corner or a joint that has opened at the seam.
RM Stone Design is an interlocking contractor and landscape construction company. We excavate, grade, build the base, set the stone, build the walls and hang the fence, in one sequence, so the finished work still reads as one surface once every trade that touched the site is gone. Pattern and material get chosen against the drawing, not before it — the last decision, not the first.
Services
Six things, done properly
Each service has a hub page with the detail behind it, and two deeper guides for the questions that come up once a project gets real.
Patios
Outdoor rooms sized around how you actually cook, dine and sit outside.
Driveways
Vehicle-rated base depth, edge restraint and drainage under a driveway you want to look at.
Fencing
Pressure-treated and cedar fencing set on footings that survive a Canadian winter.
Retaining Walls
Grade held properly — drained, backfilled and capped — so a slope becomes usable ground.
Steps & Entrances
Full-depth natural stone treads, equal risers, a nose that overhangs — the metre everyone looks at.
Why work fails
A settled wheel track is not a paver problem. It is a base that was never dug deep enough, compacted in one pass instead of four, and left with nowhere to drain.
Two surfaces that look identical on handover day can be five years apart in how long they hold their line, and the difference is entirely in work that was buried before anyone photographed it. That is why excavation depth, base build-up and the drainage destination belong in the specification, and why they are the three lines worth comparing between any two of them.
Below the surface
What the drawing assumes is already right
The visible stone is roughly the last fifteen percent of the work. This is the rest of it — and it is where a scope that came in low usually turns out to have been cut.
01
Excavation to the right depth
A walkway and a driveway are not the same job. Pedestrian surfaces need a shallower box than something a vehicle parks on, and both need the sub-grade taken down past soft or organic material rather than levelled over it.
02
Granular base, compacted in lifts
Base material goes in as a series of thin layers, each one compacted before the next arrives. A single deep pour compacts on the top and stays loose underneath, which is exactly where a low spot comes from three years later.
03
Geotextile between soil and stone
On clay and on anything with a high water table, a separation fabric keeps the sub-grade from pumping up into the base. It costs very little and it is the difference between a base that drains and a base that turns to slurry.
04
Water sent somewhere deliberate
Every surface is pitched away from the house, and the water it sheds has to arrive somewhere that can take it. Grading, surface pitch and any drain lines get resolved together, before the first paver is placed.
05
Edge restraint on every perimeter
Interlocking works because the units brace each other. The moment an unrestrained edge lets one course move, the whole field starts to spread. Every free edge gets a proper restraint spiked into the base.
06
Joints filled and locked
Swept and vibrated joint material is what turns individual pavers into a surface. Done properly it also resists weeds and stops the joints washing out at the first heavy rain.
Recent work
A few of our projects
Photographs of completed RM Stone Design work.
How it runs
From first phone call to final sweep
Site visit and measure
We walk the property with you, take the measurements, and look at the things that decide the job: where water currently goes, how much grade you are dealing with, what the access is like for machinery, and what is already failing.
Scope and layout
You get a written scope — dimensions, materials, base build-up, drainage approach and what is excluded — rather than a single number with no working shown. Pattern and colour get chosen against the house at this stage.
Excavation and base
Machinery in, spoil out, sub-grade checked, fabric down where it is warranted, granular in and compacted in lifts. This is the longest part of most jobs and the part you will never see again.
Build and finish
Stone set, edges restrained, walls built and capped, fences set on footings, joints filled and locked. We walk the finished job with you and leave the site swept.
Service area
Where we work
Based in Thornhill. These five municipalities are the whole of it — we would rather be honest about the boundary than take a job we cannot service properly.
Service area
Common questions
Before you call
How soon can interlocking work start?
It depends on the season and the size of the job. Ground work in the GTA runs roughly from April into November, and the calendar for a full driveway or patio fills further ahead than a walkway or a section of wall. The honest answer for any specific project comes after we have seen the site, so book the consultation early even if the build is months away.
Do you handle the whole project or only the stonework?
The whole exterior scope: excavation and grading, base preparation, interlocking, steps, retaining and garden walls, and fencing. Where the stone is the whole of a scope, the grading and the boundaries are left to somebody else; doing the grading, the walls and the fence line as one job is what keeps water moving the right way and stops one trade undoing another trade's work.
What actually determines whether pavers stay flat?
Almost none of it is the paver. It is the depth of the excavation, the granular base and how well it was compacted in lifts, whether the sub-base drains, and whether the perimeter is held by proper edge restraint. Get those right and an ordinary paver stays true for decades. Get them wrong and the most expensive slab on the market still settles.
Which areas do you serve?
We are based at 4 Cedar Ave in Thornhill and work in five municipalities: Thornhill, Markham, Richmond Hill, Vaughan and North York. Those are the areas we build in.