Beware the sloping walkway. The idea sounds nice, but this is the type of situation that needs completion of thought which is often overlooked. If the walkway rises to the stoop, the soil on either side must be added to in order to rise with it. That sounds simple enough. But that also means that the soil will be higher than the soil up against the main part of the house. This will trap water and will obviously slope back toward the house directing runoff toward it. The pictures that I posted above (red house) show exactly this situation as it is handicap access. As simple as it looks, this took careful planning and some major alterations to that porch design. All the framing of the porch is pressure treated wood. It is coated with a waterproof membrane and then has stone and mortar over it (on top of a poured concrete wall and blocking on a footing to support the masonry). More importantly, the porch juts out 10' from the main wall of the house. That along with the grainite curbing next to the walk, allowed the soil to slope down along the face of the porch, still have clearance between the house wood and the soils surface, to continue to slope across the face of the house, and finally continue across the side yard lawn at a 2% slope the whole way. Those conditions don't exist and can not be easily created at your front stoop. You could add bluestone on top of the stoop, but it will add a minimum of two inches in height. That will make your already high front step even higher, the threshold of the front door lower, and all the trim work on the porch to be redone (and possibly some flashing work as well). I don't think you'll get the return on your investment if you hire a good mason to do it. I think you will have nothing but problems if you have less than a skilled mason do it. Your landscaper should be able to level out a few pieces of bluestone and replace the dangerous ones, but it would not be a bad idea to get an estimate from a reputable mason who does this type of work all of the time.

Ordinarily I would find myself in agreement with almost anything Gardengal would recommend, but not in this case. Setting concrete stones at or slightly below the level of existing grass is going to result in constant dirt washing onto the soil with a sandy soil mix, and in a high desert with the constant need for irrigation for a lawn, it will also tend to wash the dirt onto pavers. I personally wouldn't want all that lawn in a climate where it will increase your water bills so tremendously, but recommended mowing heights for a Tall Fescue/Blue Grass lawn mix will be 3 inches, so having it slightly raised about 1/2 to 3/4 inches isn't going to create problems for the lawn mower. Don't forget that when rain does tend to come, as infrequent as it is, it can be the season total all at once, again likely to wash soil onto surfaces that are set too low. As to a pathway set right up against the house, it is a more common design detail in contemporary as well as spanish influenced designs, and can be a classic Spanish/Californian design detail. A desert garden doesn't lend itself to the PNW garden style with tons of foundation plantings; more widely spaced plantings and more sculptural plants placed in a more architectural or natural to the desert way seems more sympathetic to the surroundings to me. I can understand the desire to have a large green lawn in the high desert, especially if you are used to British Columbia conditions, but it is not practical in the long run, and lawn substitutes make more sense. I guess you will have to suffer through ever increasing water bills and constant battles to keep the lawn alive and looking good to understand the potential wisdom of working with your climate instead of against it. A Kentucky Blue Grass lawn doesn't even make much sense here in the San Francisco Bay Area, where they tend to want to go dormant in the summer heat and take much more water and care to keep looking decent than other lawn grasses. I'd suggest that you look into real water miser grasses such as Buffalo Grass for the high desert. Admittedly it will go winter dormant in your area, but it fills in quite quickly with desert heat, and needs hardly any water in comparison to cool season turf grasses such as Tall Fescue or KBG. If your area has a good low water demonstration garden to visit, I'd recommend a visit. Most California Water Districts do have such a display garden to show the merits of plantings that take less water and care. There is a very nice Display garden in Las Vegas, which isn't exactly close, but is similar in climate to your conditions, and illustrates the wealth of plants that actually make sense in your climate.

They delivered 4 yards in a big dump truck. We shoveled it into a wheelbarrow and spread it from there about 2 - 3 inches deep with one of those short-tined rakes. Watering it in and walking over it compresses the rocks together and over time it compacts tightly and is great to walk on WITH shoes. The inserted stones are broken pieces of cement pavers. I broke some that I had then went to KMart where they give away their broken pieces. The color is a medium metal gray that darkens when wet. Weeds that sprout in the granite dust are easily pulled out. There is weed cloth underneath - the 15-yr kind from Lowes. It has a very tight weave. Nothing is going to come through that stuff. So glad you like it, Sammy. We're very pleased with how it turned out. We moved our Black & Decker shed last weekend so I have to get more stone to extend the path and cover a potting area. Hopefully, it will only take a yard. BTW, the dogs don't mind walking on it, but human bare feet hate it. The stones are sharp and stick in your feet. Sherry

I always thought decomposed granite was crushed granite, what is left over after the larger bits have been screened off. Here in Phoenix the terms decomposed granite and 1/4 minus are used interchangeably. But selling decomposed granite with clay in it seems like a scam to me. 50 years ago in Upstate NY many people used crushed granite and decomposed granite for driveways. Concrete and asphalt driveways were very rare then in our area. Larger crushed rock was put down, generally not rolled because that cost money. You drove on that for a year which pushed the rock down into the soil and you raked loose stuff back over into the ruts. Over time that made a good base. Then you brought in some smaller rock and repeated. Then decomposed granite. The bigger rock helped keep the decomposed granite stay in place. The bigger rock pushed down into the soil reduced future rutting. But you still had to re-level and bring in more material every 3-5 years or so. Here in Phoenix I like decomposed granite a lot. I like a thin layer, 1/2" max. More than that and it's like walking on the beach.