Friday, March 30, 2012

Dig That Driveway!

Since it rained yesterday and I had no other real idea of what to do today, I decided it was finally time to do a better job of fixing the pit of despair in my driveway.  I did an extraordinarily quick fix last month, and as ugly as my conglomeration of sticks, wanuts, rocks, and leaves was, it held quite nicely.

I was getting really tired of staring at that ugly mess, though, so I headed behind the garage to grab a bunch of realtively thin slabs of pavement that had been tossed there at some point in the past.  I took them to the driveway, one at a time.  Those things were heavy!


My tools were simple.  I used a rake to remove the loose leaves and sticks.  I had a simple garden spade for digging.  I also used a small dandelion weeder for some of the more stubborn sticks and rocks.  That's all!

I had to dig down into the dirt in order to press the pieces of pavement down far enough, then used that same dirt to fill in the spaces between the slabs.  I actually recovered quite a bit of walnut pieces, sticks, and leaves, as well.  The walnut shells are quite sturdy, and do a very effective job of strengthening the borders so that they don't start to cave in on each other. 

I only managed to get a small portion done today, so this is going to take a bit of time to complete, but here's a quick look contrasting the new longer-lasting method and the old, ugly one.


It's not a pretty job, but I have a huge area to cover, so I'm starting with the main problem areas.  I'll fill in the edges later.  To give you some idea of how large this nasty sinking pit is, look at the largest of the five slabs.  That one is 23 inches across at its longest point, and was a good test of my endurance!

Once I get this job done I'll need to see about brightening it up a bit.  I'm thinking that putting moss between the slabs may be a good idea, since it's something that stays very close to the ground, rather than growing upward.

2 comments:

  1. you could also purchase a "green" paint and make an afternoon of it painting flowers on them randomly... or, one green one brown one rust...etc etc

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    1. I love this idea! I think I may have some painting to do in the near future... Woohoo!!!

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