Week 3 - The Driveway

The next step is removing my driveway, the laurel hedge that borders it, and the remains of my little elm tree. Supposed to take a week at most.

A part of the project that I removed, put back, and then removed again to bring the budget down was tearing out half the carport pad and the back yard patio, which would have happened at this stage. I still want it done, but it isn't essential to the rest of the project, so I'm going to do it myself. Follow my progress on the carport page.

To begin with, the earth moving equipment didn't arrive until late Wednesday (although we had a mild earthquake earlier in the day, which I initially thought was them arriving -- but no). And then the excavator spent Thursday and a good part of Friday fixing the equipment as it sat in my driveway until the very end of the week ...

... and then they had trouble pulling up the edge of the driveway at the carport. The concrete was particularly thick (8") and two layers of embedded wire help it hold together REALLY well. And they simply couldn't get a grip on it or approach it from any angle which did give an edge to grab, although they made some rubble out of the surface.

I can see I'm going to have to be a little more zen about this whole process ... less goal and time line oriented, at least for the first phase, because there is nothing I can do to make it go faster. At this point, it is one thing at a time in a specific order, and if a step is delayed, everything behind it is also delayed because nothing can be moved up "while we wait." Hopefully, that won't always be the case.

But then, late Friday afternoon, they finally pulled up a good edge and got down to it. In very short order they removed half the driveway and pulled up the elm tree.

That half day's digging was the extent of the first week's work, but it's still a pretty impressive amount of destruction, and more than I could have done by myself in a month, as the carport removal would later show.

Also, during this one week in a very dry winter, it managed to rain as heavy equipment was moving back and forth across my front yard, transforming a big dirt pile into a sticky, hilly, muddy mess which will eventually dry to the consistency of concrete -- except for the part that transfers itself relentlessly into the house by devious and sometimes magical means. When I pointed out to Larry (my project foreman) that I now had no access to my house that didn't involve mud, he very quickly made me a temporary front walk out of plywood.

So now, three weeks into my project we are already a week and a half behind.

On a more hopeful note, in spite of everything, spring is managing to come in what remains of my yard.

Week 4 - The Hedge