The owner is on your job, not just on the estimate
Exterior Designs is family owned and operated, and Todd Chandler runs it. Todd is an ICPI Certified Paver Installer, a Belgard Master Craftsman and an Allan Block Certified Installer, and he comes out and measures the work himself. You are not handed off to a salesperson who never picks up a plate compactor.
The crew wear lime green shirts, so you always know who is on your property. If you want to know who you are dealing with before you call, read a bit more about us first.
Almost all of the work happens before a paver is laid
Nobody photographs the part that decides how long a paver surface lasts. We dig out the soft soil, then build the aggregate base in compacted lifts, deeper under a driveway than under a patio because the loads are different. On top of that goes a screeded bedding layer, kept to a consistent depth so nothing settles in patches later.
Then the field gets laid, the edge restraint is pinned along every open side, and joint sand is swept in and vibrated home so the pavers lock against each other. That is what interlock actually means, and it is the whole point of a properly installed paver surface.
Built to ICPI specification, with 20 years behind it
Every installation we do is built to the specification set by the Interlocking Concrete Pavement Institute, and it carries a 20 year warranty. The specification is not a marketing line, it is base depth, compaction, bedding thickness, edge restraint and joint sand, each with a number attached. We can tell you what those numbers are for your project before anything is dug. Estimates are free and there is no pressure. See everything we build on our services page.
Water is what ruins paving on the Peninsula
Winter here is wet, a lot of Peninsula lots slope toward the house, and clay soils hold water long after the rain stops. Water that sits will find the base, soften it, and then the surface above it moves. So we set the fall before we set a single paver, and where the grade cannot carry the water away on its own we build in a trench drain or a catch basin and pipe it out. Our water off a driveway properly is usually the reason a driveway we built still sits flat.
Interlocking pavers and natural stone, nothing else
We do not pour concrete, we do not do stamped concrete and we do not lay asphalt. We say that on the phone and we will say it here. A poured slab cracks where it wants to, and once it does the only honest fix is to break it out. A paver field is made of individual units, so a section can be lifted, the base corrected and the same pavers reset, with no patch and no color mismatch. That is why we build patios the way we do.
One crew, out of one shop in San Carlos
Everything runs out of 542 El Camino Real Ste 110 in San Carlos, right on CA 82. That puts Belmont and Redwood City either side of us, San Mateo, Burlingame and Hillsborough a short run up US 101 or I 280, and Menlo Park and Atherton the same distance south. It is our own crews on every one of those jobs, a demolition crew and three install crews, never a subcontractor. Start with the towns we cover, or just tell us about the job and tell us where you are.