Stone Pool Surrounds and Steps in Corfu

Pools and steps are where stone meets water and the foot, so the work has to be exact. We dress stone into pool surrounds, coping and garden steps for the north-east coast, Sinies limestone as standard, or a marble or travertine you prefer, every edge worked by hand, every tread set true. Where a plot runs to the water, the coping and steps carry on down to the sea itself.

Around the water we keep the palette tight. Sinies limestone for coping and dressed steps; reclaimed island cobble where a courtyard wants an older, settled surface. The aim is a pool surround and a flight of steps that read as part of the ground they sit in, quiet underfoot, easy to walk in bare feet, and cut to weather the salt and the seasons.

Coping decides whether a pool surround lasts, so it carries the most careful work. Each length is finished with a bullnose, the edge rounded by hand so there is no hard arris against a wet foot, and the underside is cut with a drip, a worked groove that makes water fall clear of the joint instead of tracking back beneath the stone. We bed and point the coping in lime mortar, which breathes and lets the work dry out between seasons, where cement traps salt damp behind the stone and holds it against the joint. Treads and copings alike are gauged by hand before anything is set, each piece offered up against its neighbours so the finished edge runs true around the water. It is slow work, and it is the difference between a surround that weathers quietly and one that fails at the edge first.

Steps on this coast are rarely a flat-ground problem. Most flights run down sloping ground toward the water, so the geometry is taken from the slope's true fall rather than from a standard rise forced onto it. We gauge every tread so the rise and going stay even from the first step to the last, because a flight you can walk without watching your feet is the whole point of cutting each stone by hand. On sloping ground the steps and the retaining face behind them are built as one structure, the flight tied into the wall that holds the bank, so the two carry together instead of parting at the joint as the ground settles. The result is a run of steps that reads as part of the ground it descends, dressed Sinies limestone set true, made to be walked barefoot from the terrace down to the water.