A house as pretty as that deserves brick. What a charmer!

Barb, what a beautiful house. If it has brick currently, I'd probably replace the steps with brick. What is your walk made of right now? Brick pavers could look great. Where are you all located? I could see the right kind of slate steps and walk with your home also.

Thanks all so much. I think the walk is concrete. So I think I am going with brick treads and concrete risers since many houses in the area have this. I may use some of the old bricks. WHat do you think of granite? Brick for the walk seems too much. This is in Massachusetts.

Have you considered granite?

I live in a reproduction of an old colonial style home. We considered brick for our front steps, but were leary of maintainance problems.

DH decided on granite; one larger slab for the top step, several smaller slabs arranged in a rectangle for the bottom step, and that hold up the top slab.

Looks appropriate for an old home, and absolutely no maintainance.

Problem with brick in New England if laid flat for a walkway is that it will heave. You could always do brick risers with flagstone pavers. When getting estimates, make sure the contractors talk about using concrete, with rebar, as a base to help battle frost heave.

Please don't do wood. We just replaced a walkway that had pressure treated wood along the edges - you can see my post from today with pics of our old walkway in CT. The wood was a terrible hazzard any time it got wet because it is so slippery. Plus, even with pressure treated, with it laying in the ground, bugs get in and destroy it and the moisture does lots of damage.

Wanted to add that for our walkway, we put in concrete pavers that look like cobblestones. They are a light gray and go well with the darker gray of the granite steps.

Sand was put in between the pavers, and for the top layer, a sand like substance was put in that hardens so that weeds find it difficult to grow. I didn't want to have to spend time weeding the walkway, and I don't use herbicides, so this was a good solution for us.

There was a period of about 10 years between when we put in the granite steps and when we put in the pavers for the walkway. Initially we just put in stepping stones for a walkway ourselves while we saved our pennies. My Dad said of the stepping stones "It looks like they have been here for a hundred years." It was a nice compliment.

I agree that wood steps could be a mistake, but for a reason in addition to being slippery. Our previous house, a Victorian built in the late 1870s, had a wooden porch and steps. These lay in the direction of weather, and rain, snow, and ice would directly hit them and/or accumulate on them. The paint job never looked good for more than several months; it began to fade fairly quickly, or worse: peeling and bubbling on the treads. Perhaps I should have used the very highest-quality paint; perhaps that might have done the trick -- I don't know.

Suffice to say that, in this house, for both front and back entrances, we had a stone porch and stone steps put by our contractor, whose area of expertise is masonry. It was expensive, but probably not much more, if any, than having custom wood. But any cost difference more than made up for by the low, low maintenance.

A walkway of stone might be the most authentic, but I think you could get away with concrete, too.

Is there any reason why you're not going to keep the iron railings that you have? We had to replace rotted wood railings, and we chose iron. They are beautiful, look authentic, and we love them, but there were quite expensive. I wish there had been decent iron railings there to begin with, even if the style had been less interesting.

Brick for sure. Not only would it look great, you'd never have to worry about it again!

Granite slab would be appropriate for the location and period of the home.

Brick would be gorgeous if you can do it - otherwise I'd say flagstone.