Before & After #55 - the driveway

Saturday, 26 August 2023

When we made plans for the first phase of landscaping for St Helens, we agreed that we would have a gravel driveway as it would be a) cheaper, and b) possibly nicer than a whole lot of concrete. And from a distance it seems fine:

But actually it's been a major pain.  Firstly, whenever there is heavy rain, lots of the gravel just washes down into the street, leaving ankle-rolling ditches and holes:

Secondly, it's a bit yukky to walk on in bare feet as the gravel sticks to your feet or any bags you put on the ground - pretty early on we re-used Jo's pavers to create a way to hop from the door to the bins without touching the gravel - it just required a leap off the doorstep to start with.

But the worst part is that every time someone walks across the driveway and into the house they either have to spend a minute getting the gravel off their shoes, or we immediately get gravel footprints and little pieces of gravel everywhere inside the house. It's been really annoying and messy and I've spent way too long vacuuming the entrance area and sweeping out the garage.  We also need to sweep and mop the doorstep regularly to keep it from looking awful. 

 About a month ago we agreed the annoyance outweighed the hefty cost of getting the driveway concreted so we organised a local crew to come and fix it for us - it was my job to supervise the work (well, be around for questions) this week which is why I've stayed on in St Helens.  Before Jon left we went outside and marked out the approximate position of the new work - as you can see we had differing opinions about the coverage in some areas! 

The job itself took two days and a revolving crew of about 6 blokes.  A bonus of the work was getting the drain in the driveway replaced as it's been a bit of a hazard since it was installed.

By Tuesday afternoon the concrete was poured and by Thursday I could walk on it and start on the cleanup process - there was a lot of concrete in the garden and splashed onto  the side of the house and posts.  I spent a lot of time with a scrubbing brush and scraper cleaning up edges and wiping surfaces.

Now it's nearly dry and looking great - it's been such a pleasure to walk in and out of the house without leaving a trail of gravel! There's still some dirt and gravel the contractors need to come and clean up but aside from that it's looking schmick.

and as another bonus, I've been able to re-re-use Jo's pavers out the back!