Sunday, September 22, 2013

Paving the way

Sometimes you don't know that a life event is lurking until it hits you square on the head.

But the time had come — we needed to pave our gravel driveway.

Yes, I know what you're thinking: paving a driveway is NOT a life event. Yeah, well, just don't tell that to my bank account.

But we'd grown tired of having to remove stones that had gotten caught in the brake calipers of my car on more than one occasion. We were tired of pulling weeds from the gravel or even walking on stones that would shift under your feet.

It was time.

So we found a contractor, Tim Walser, and took the plunge. Herewith is a photo essay of our journey:

Here is our old weed-and-gravel driveway that is desperately in need of resurfacing.
Contractor Tim Walser grades the driveway with his trusty Bobcat. I want one.
Wooden forms define the boundary where the concrete will be poured.
A massive cement mixer somehow negotiates the narrow driveway. Whew.
Walser smooths out the concrete as it chutes into the driveway.
The finished product. Looks pretty good, doesn't it?
The whole process took two full work days — and about three truckloads of concrete — to complete. I was petrified that friends and neighbors would want to put their initials in the drying concrete (a proven primal urge, apparently contained in our DNA as I understand it), or that a stray animal might want to leave a paw print or some other memento behind, but it never happened.

On the other hand, if you ever want to draw a crowd, get a cement mixer to come to your house. Little knots of onlookers sometimes gathered in the course of the day to check out what the Wehrles were doing, and that was fine. It was a social happening. I think there must be something fascinating about concrete trucks that bring people together — cementing bonds, as it were.

Anyway, I still can't put a car on it for a couple more days as the concrete cures, and there'll be a little landscaping and reseeding of grass in our future, but we're getting close.

It was time.

5 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing your story about paving your gravel driveway. I am more aware of what to expect when I finally pave my own driveway, including the crowd of onlookers. I was glad to hear that the process only took a couple of days, and your new driveway looks awesome! Thanks for the article! http://www.interstatepavingllc.com

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  2. Awesome post! Love the work in progress pics!
    Mikey R.

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