Surveying his Scottish residence

On the new steps in Perth!

My parents built their home 40 years ago and, whilst my dad initially liked his design of the circular front door steps, they become worn and very discoloured over the years and, after about 10 years, they started to look at alternatives.

Unfortunately, primarily because the original construction had not been built to a true circular radius, nothing was going to look right - brick, tiles or even marble were all rejected.

Then at the end of last year they decided to just rip the whole lot out and start again from scratch!

The stonemason had said he'd never had such detailed plans to work from (that's a retired quantity surveyor for you!) and nearly two months ago they were finished exactly to spec.

Beautiful local sandstone walls with a lovely stone coping on top.

And our present for the special birthday last week, were three new plants to go at the base of the walls and then two tubs to go either side at the bottom of the steps. Which we planted up today - including using 7 enormous bags of compost to fill the holes!

Bill was very good during all this and just sat on the top looking out over his Scottish residence ;-)