And you better believe I’m screaming! Everyone, how long have I been waiting for a driveway? Eleven years! We’ve been in this house for eleven years with no driveway, and it’s finally happening next week. I’m so excited I can hardly concentrate on anything else. I’ll share with you how this all came about, but first, let me back up a bit.
The first time I stopped by this house to take a look, the first thing I noticed was that it had no driveway. That alone was almost a deal breaker, but I tried to keep an open mind because it was a house that desperately needed some TLC (which is what I wanted), it was in the city (a non-negotiable for me, I’m not a country girl), and it was on a one-acre lot (incredibly hard to get in the city). So even though I hated that it didn’t have a driveway, I tried to get past it.
All there was was an old gravel road, with most of the gravel displaced at that point and much of it overgrown with weeds. And the driveway went from the street directly to the garage.
And as you know, over the years, that garage became my studio and we added a carport to the back of the studio. We didn’t have a driveway yet, and at that point, we needed an even longer driveway (about twice the length of the original driveway).
We priced the driveway years ago, and the estimate they gave us was about $20,000 to go from the street to the side of the house and stop it so it lines up with the back of the carport. A couple of years later, another person gave us a rough estimate and came up with the same amount. But I didn’t just want the driveway to end there. I knew I wanted to extend it to the back of the workshop as well, but I thought we would have to do it in stages due to the cost. In fact, you can see how he wanted it in the landscape design.
So the driveway has always been on our to-do list, but it never made it to the top priority. So here we were, eleven years later, and still no driveway.
Fast forward to last week. I had just built my workshop a couple of weeks ago and now needed a ramp that went from the end of the garage to the garage door of the workshop.
I weighed the pros and cons of building a wood ramp or pouring concrete, and Matt and I agreed that concrete would be ideal. A friend of ours had given me the name of the man they used for their concrete driveway, so I called him and he came to look at the project and take some measurements.
While the concrete man was here, I asked him to not only give me an estimate for the ramp from the garage to the shop, but I also explained that we would be pouring a concrete driveway later, probably in two different sections. at two different times and asked him to give me a price for each of them as well.
Well, he gave me the prices and I couldn’t believe it!! The price for all three projects (ramp, driveway, and driveway extension) was about what I expected for the driveway alone. I was so excited! I told him that he would have to talk to Matt about the order in which he wanted to do these things, and that we would probably want to do the ramp now, and then, maybe in a few months, we would do the Phase. 1 of the driveway, and maybe next summer, we would do Phase 2 of the driveway. But when I shared the prices with Matt, he said, “Let’s do it all now.”
THAT???!!!! MY GOD!!! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!!
So the concrete man jumped into action right away and sent his guys out yesterday to remove the old 11 foot chain link gate and the two small sections of fence on either side.
Just watching that fence come down was so exciting to me! I’d been staring at that monstrosity for eleven years and it had gotten to the point where it was completely useless. It didn’t close because it dragged the ground a lot. So it was not only ugly, but useless.
They had a hard time removing those sections of fence because the area was covered in junk trees (hackberry and such) that had grown into and through the fence.
But my goodness, just opening the door made a huge difference!
Almost everything went smoothly until they reached these poles. They had a hard time getting them out. But of course, they finally got it.
And here it is, without the old fence sections and the huge gate. What a difference already!
And now, today, the tree guys are here cutting down all that overgrowth and cutting down those junk trees, grinding out stumps and getting everything ready for concrete next week. WOOOOOO!!! So this view is about to change dramatically.
I can finally say goodbye (and goodbye) to this old neglected gravel driveway, and I’ll have a proper concrete driveway that runs from the street to the side of the house and back to the garage.
The driveway will go through my workshop and line up with the far wall of the workshop. (Say hello to Tiger, the neighborhood stray cat who spends the most time at my house because I feed him every day. ) The driveway will meet the small porch outside the side door of the studio, and then you will pass the air-conditioning. unit, you will find the garage.
And then behind the garage you will meet the ramp to my workshop. Side note: While taking pictures this morning, I saw something I had never seen before. There is a deer in my backyard. Can you see it? Tiger is looking right at him and he has the fluffiest story I’ve ever seen, and the fur on his back is standing up. In eleven years, this is the first time I have seen a deer in my yard.
Anyway, this whole area is being cleaned today. All of these trees and their overgrowth are being sent through the wood chipper right now as I write this. It’s an exciting day!
And while they’re here, they’ll clear up the rest of this mess left over from the frantic tree pruning that had to be done the morning construction on the shop began.
And they will remove all the branches that I cut the day before the workshop was built. I put them in two big piles under these trees. I know some of you were nervous about that and the fire danger it presented. So after today, your worries will disappear.
And after next week, this view will be drastically different.
In 2018, I got some spray paint and painted lines on the ground to see what my curved path would look like. Here’s an idea of where the driveway will go…
Anyway, I’m very excited. After waiting so long, it seems like everything is happening very quickly now! He said they can start early next week. I hope that means Monday!
UPDATE:
These tree types are making quick work of this! This area with overgrowth of junk trees along the fence to the left of where our driveway will go (i.e. the trees that make the fence barely visible, if at all)…
…now it looks like this…
Now it looks like a driveway could fit in there!
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 upper that my husband Matt and I purchased in 2013. Matt has MS and can’t do physical labor, so I do most of the work in the house alone. You can learn more about me here.
