Driveway Moments

As many of you who have visited us (in the past, obviously. We no longer "visit", do we?) know, we have a long and treacherous driveway. Torturous, really.There I am above, attempting to not fall into one of the many( and very deep!) holes that decorated our driveway. As we share the driveway with our neighbors, we often shared thoughts as to how we needed to get together and fix it up.
Bob- and myself in a far more limited capacity- had wheel-barrowed many a stone to try and fill the larger holes but it was beyond our abilities. We had discussed getting a pick-up trucks worth of gravel and filling holes- or more radically- purchasing a dump trucks worth of gravel. (The cost is NOT in the gravel, but in the delivery.) We assumed we'd all get together and spend an afternoon spreading gravel (such fun!!) and split the cost. Our neighbors volunteered to call around for pricing...

Picture of "the old driveway" complete with central raised strip of grass.
Imagine our surprise when I was told by A + K (names hidden to protect the identities!) that they'd contacted a local company and the entire driveway was "being done"; and not just dropping a load of gravel, but leveling and scraping and pounding and packing. We contemplated the cost of such a lavish operation (initially considering maybe $200 each for the gravel) and expressed our concern.
"Not to worry!", exclaimed A + K; they were paying for the whole thing!!!
My goodness! Such good neighbors! I hate to consider what it cost... but they had wanted to (gasp) pave the driveway when they moved in, and I'm sure that was prohibitive. So this was a happy conclusion and they said how appreciative they'd been when Bob snow-blowed and weed-whacked the entire length of the driveway many times. Wow! There are nice people out there!

So one day, enormous equipment got dropped off. I don't know about you but I'm so super excited and thrilled by big equipment. (Like when we went to the gravel pit that time: see blog post from several years back when we made the terrace.) Oh boy! Early morning progress!

Lots of beep-beep-beep back up noises and huge dump trucks and piles and piles of gravel...

Nothing for scale, but these were BIG piles- heaps! Several men with shovels began dancing with a bulldozer type appliance and they spread it all out and then pounded the hell out of it. This took hours. I was in my studio- which is right off the driveway- and it felt like the house might cave in. That would have been an interesting side effect of getting that perfect driveway.

I think this is the thing that made the house shake. It was all very amazing. I couldn't help but wonder where our neighbor's two kids were, though. As a kid I would have been out there watching... better than t.v.! But maybe modern children are different.

Maybe this isn't the most dramatic picture, but it's lovely! Beautiful! No bone-jarring, frame-bending catastrophe to negotiate...  It's a pleasure to sail up and down the driveway now. If only we had somewhere to go; seeing as how the pandemic still rages and we're being stay-at-home conservative.

Rock Shop

Part of the fun of building the terrace is a trip to the quarry. Yay! The piles of sand, gravel, rock, slag and slurry are staggeringly high and it's like visiting the moon or Mars. The first time I went to this quarry with Bob (maybe when we were constructing the chimney? my studio?) I was intimidated by the vast barren heaps and the gigantic equipment that barrels by at what seems like a million miles an hour. Everyone is on an important mission, dwarfed by their humongous Tonka toys.

They're so purposeful and all lined up to be filled with mammoth amounts of pre-mixed concrete. Our project seems so puny in comparison. (And here's a fun fact: the gravel we're buying is absurdly cheap. An entire ton of that crushed stone we got to start the terrace was only $15. The stuff we bought today was only $25 a ton. But to get it delivered was $305! Thank goodness we have the trusty red pick up truck.) The clouds of dust are evidence of just how fast they're going.

Here's a shot of the mountain of rock that they're busily reducing to the 1/2 inch gravel like the stuff we're buying. It looks like the Grand Canyon (or again, the moon) and there are monster trucks racing up and down this very steep access road. It all seems somewhat precarious.

Here's Bob bravely facing down the giant bucket loader that is a big as our truck. These guys are pretty masterful about loading in just the amount you want. I guess they could really crush the truck beneath a pile of rubble if they wanted to. But loaded up, we safely departed and began the other fun- of shoveling off all that gravel back home...


 

What We Do For Fun

I occurred to me that a stipulation for us being on this year's garden tour was that we get the deck redone as a lovely terrace. Let's face it: you can garden until the cows come home, but if the back of the house looks like Shanty Town, then none of it is worth the effort. I knew we had no time to replace the deck entirely and I was even debating dragging one of the carpets out of the house to disguise the rotting deck and aspiring plant life housed there in, when the most excellent solution presented itself. Why not simply tear up the disintegrating boards and replace them with gravel?
I can't believe that Bob actually agreed- and agreed that it was a good idea- because the gravel is really a step in the final master plan of a cement and stone terrace. So we're just replacing the deck in stages. Tuesday was set aside as Terrace Construction Day. As you can see, Robin helped with Stage One: the tearing up of the boards.
This part was relatively easy and sort of fun. We crowbarred and maddox'ed the old boards out and soon had an empty site.

Here, Robin and I admire the (mostly) removed deck on our way into lunch. The next stage (Stage 2)was to dig out a layer of dirt so that the level of the gravel was below the sliding door. This part nearly killed me! It was incredibly humid and the dirt was very compacted (a full of small stones) and needed to be wheel-barrowed down to Bob's studio. It was heavy and dirty and we were sweating like pigs. But we got it done and with an eye on the clock (as we had a dinner engagement) we proceeded to Stage 3. This is where I realized that Bob and I would do just fine on a chain gang, as we shoveled a half ton of gravel off the truck and onto the deck area.

Oooooohhh! It was heavy and our shoulders and backs and bodies were killing us, but all that work paid off and it looks great! Nice and neat and clean and beige and no weeds or weird gaps...
it made the terrace area look like a terrace. And done just in time to shower and go to dinner!

The ultimate finished stone and cement terrace will expand to the whole width of the house, but as a quick (relatively) fix, it was a good solution. I'll post pictures tomorrow of the chairs and pots of flowers back in place on the terrace; it looks terrific! Also, pay attention to the left hand section of the sliding door frame. Bob did a super fix of that today...

Piles

Oh no! Sort of deja vu all over again... I think I'm seeing piles of sand and gravel. It must be last year and we're only starting my studio project! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
But wait; could it be that we're finally embarking on the famous "Blue Plate Special" Walkway Project? Bob and I spent yesterday morning (which you will remember as being incredibly hot and sweaty) procuring- and then unloading- an impressive pile of gravel and sand. This took two trips to our local sand and gravel emporium; that's quite an exciting field trip! Towering heaps of all sizes of gravel and dirt and sand and giant trucks (which dwarfed our full sized pick up!) and large hoppers and conveyor belts delivering tons of processed rock. Altogether lunar and very dramatic! They load you up with a huge scooper bucket loader that appeared bigger than the truck.
All I can say is that I was altogether exhausted and on my third tee shirt by the time I had unloaded and then completed excavating the remaining dirt on the soon to be walkway. Another pile was created:

This may not look that big but what with heat and humidity, I was too exhausted to even spread the gravel out into the walkway. And that would have been very satisfying and impressive. Instead I made the mistake of taking a break and visiting my horse, who had thoughtfully provided me with several "piles" in her stall. This was to remind me to clean the pasture.

A woman's work is never done!
But here's a shot of the completely dug out walkway, awaiting Fourth of July gravel:

I made it with a unique and swishy lopsided sway, that I thought referenced those "Stella Doro Breakfast Treats". (Kind of an expanded S). I get my inspirations every where!