300 plus foot driveway

[uniongoon]

I purchased my home last Dec. It has a great shop but no driveway out to it.
The main tool.

I dug a trench and put in electrical, cold water and a weeping system to control spring flood waters.

Before work began

building the on ramp down to the yard from main driveway

Brought in boulders from nearby fields to support the sides of the ramp


Midway through my retaining wall along side of the house


and a small retaining wall out by shop to support the ramp up to the garage, I used small bricks because they were free


I will try to keep this post going to the finish, brought in two triaxle truck loads of limestone screening today, and got remainder of retaining wall stone, just need to put in some more labour.

[dave1949]

Nice work. I like the retaining wall between the house and new drive. Looks very nice. Welcome to TBN!
Dave.

[bpattie]

nice project,

[20 20]

looks good.

[jayste]

Great job. Keep us posted on the remainder of the job.

Jay

[uniongoon]

Well I have been steadily plugging away in any spare time I have. It is dark by 5:30 now, so not much gets done between my job and sparse weekends. But I now have a good enough base to drive on for the winter.
Also if you notice in my before picture, there is no sliding door, I put one in so now I have a great view.



Retaining wall is in, and I am part ways done putting in a little granite stairway




Not sure if I will do much more until spring. I may let things settle over the winter/spring thaw and see what kind of movement I get, if any, knock on wood.

[EddieWalker]

Nice job.

I have two quetions.

How did you smooth out the gravel?

Is that a door on the side of your home that doesn't have a floor under it?

Eddie

[horse7]

I had a area bulldozed out years ago, looked faintly like the last pic with the rocks next to the driveway-- mine was a sort of cut in the side of a hill with the rocks rolling down the sides (lot of rocks...).

Recently finished moving the rocks to the nearby stone walls, because it required too much weed wacking to keep things looking clean. The objective is to have a smooth enough surface to use machinery to bush hog or mow vs. laboriously hand wacking the weeds around a bunch of rocks... In retrospect should probably have split some of the larger 1500lb+- rocks before moving them to the walls that are mostly 10-70lb rocks [the 2000lb and up were split first].

Nice view from the slider, a bit surprising the house was built with no windows on that face.

[uniongoon]

Yeah, odd someone would build a lakeview house and not add the lakeview, but fixed now, and as for there being a floor under the sliding door, that is merely an optical illusion, there is 12 inch floor joists in between the upper and lower. The smoothing was a painfully slow process between my 6 foot blade, hand raking and a ride on pavement roller which I borrowed from a friend.

[jenkinsph]

I think Eddie and myself are wondering about having a sliding door without a deck on the outside. Might be kinda dangerous.


steve