Hope you had a wonderful Christmas and are getting ready for some awesome New Year's plans!
Yup, it's me. Sam. The blogger that disappeared for the last 12 days. Between the kids pre-Christmas school activities, a visit from Southern friends and an overnight in SF, hosting Christmas Eve and Christmas Day here at the new house, and celebrating my niece's wedding on the 27th (I was matron of honor) … it's been absolute insanity over here. Insanity of the very best kind, of course. Photos have been shared daily on Instagram if you'd like to join me over there…
While the blog took a back seat for the last few weeks, home projects still continued. Namely, a huge project called "the other half of the driveway"!
And guess what? It's done!
D. O. N. E. ! ! !
Oh yea! Happy dance over here! Just a matter of 6 more days before my car rolls up this new, beautiful, flat, smooth surface….
Heaven, I tell you. Especially after driving on this for the last 4+ months…
With the back half of the driveway completed (shared here), it was time to finish up the second half. Although it was a smaller area, it still required 3 truck loads of cement, a lot of patience for smoothing the wet concrete while squeezing into tight spaces, and some pre-planning for future electrical needs.
We started by framing the driveway and laying the rebar….
Then we added conduit underground for a future gate, electrical for the pillars on either side of the gate (we want a light on top of each pillar), and outlets running up the long driveway for Christmas lights. The conduit runs all the way over to the house so that in the future when these electrical items are in place, we can have a switch or two inside for ease of turning off and on from the indoors….
The prep work took about 3-4 days. Then Saturday the 21st the cement trucks rolled in…
Again, color I chose is "silver smoke"…
There were many tight spaces for the guys to squeeze into for the smoothing and brushing process. This took patience...
In 3 days it was dry enough to walk on. This is the view from the house side looking out toward the street...
Lovely lines...
And here's the view from the street looking onto the property…
Sooooo much better than this!…
Right?!
Happy girl!
There are more plans for this driveway….plants and flowers on either side, sprinklers, lighting, and a gate with 2 pillars.
Speaking of the gate, my concrete guy made a little oops. He placed the rebar and electrical for the future gate too far apart. Here you can see how far apart he has the rebar placed...
As opposed to where I would prefer the pillars be located…
Only a minor issue that he can fix, but it will involve cutting away some of the new concrete and re-doing the conduit. Pretty small in the grand scheme. Since I plan on living here forever (I hope!) this is something I would like done correctly. And a larger gate will cost me a lot more money. I don't need that!
I added a small concrete pad for the trash cans, which turned out awesome…
Makes it a whole lot easier to haul 3 heavy cans each week out to the street and back.
As the concrete continues to cure, I will share updated photos of the color. It's going to be a very light gray.
As far as the next stage of the front of the house landscape / renovations, I'm moving forward with sod, hedges, and plants for this large area….
I can not wait to have this dirt covered and see beautiful green grass when I walk out the front door! The grass and concrete alone is going to make a huge difference to this front yard space.
Am working on a lot of indoor organization projects and plans for the blog for the new year. Can't wait to share with you!
Have a great day!
