The Driveway Re-Do

We've always taken the simple act of driving up the driveway to our house for granted.

Whichever house that happened to be in our 27 years in the Air Force.

Even our duplex in Yigo, Guam had a driveway.

Then we moved into this little cottage of ours.

Curb appeal was non-existent.

So was the driveway!

We had a driveway, kind of.

I think someone dumped bits and pieces of leftover blacktop over time.

Then, they ran it over, a little.

There were no boundaries, and over time grass and weeds began to grow through it.

And I felt like I was going to bottom out each time I drove in or backed out.

And it drained into the garage when there was a heavy rain.

So, we decided to

put in a nice big driveway that was engineered to drain away from the house.

Isn't that a novel idea.

There's actually a funny story about the "price quote" I received from the people doing this for us.

The gentleman shows up, measures, asks how many expansion and control joints we wanted.

I gave him the numbers our city inspector gave me.

Yada, yada.

He comes back with a quote of 450.

Dollars? I asked.

Are you sure only $450 dollars.

4-5-0 dollars?

Yes, yes, yes. He says.

I think I was borderline obnoxious.

He had a very heavy Mexican accent,

then throw in my New England accent,

and the fact that I LOVE a good deal!

Well, the husband comes home and I relay the whole story to him.

He looks at me like I've been smoking something.

"You can't even rip the old stuff out for $450!"

Long story short-

When in doubt, have the contractor WRITE the amount out.

Lesson learned.

So. here's how it went.

Tear it out and make it bigger.

Put in rebar and chairs.

Groovy boots!

Bring in a couple of concrete trucks.

The "make the concrete vibrate" machine.

I'm pretty sure that's the technical name for it.

It vibrates the concrete so there are no are pockets that would weaken the structure when cured.

They level it.

I don't know what the term is for this.

However, in my professional opinion, I'd call it "smoothing it out".

These guys definitely knew what they were doing.

We now have a great place to park.

I hope we added value to our property.

Although it wasn't the deal of the century,

we love that it adds a finishing detail to the front yard

 and we're not bottoming out any more.

These guys did this all in 2 days.

It pays to know when to call in the professionals!

ann marie