BEFORE: Our Big (HUGE) Project

Every year that Cody and I have lived in our home we have tried to do at least one project in our yard. This NEW Driveway project was HUGE this year!

 This is last winter/spring 2011, when the inspiration for this project came. Cody and I were out hand shoveling our driveway at 1am because it was too heavy and muddy to use the snowblower and we were FLOODING! So every inch or two that it snowed we would go out and scrap off the driveway. It was during one of these in the middle of the night shoveling times that I said, "Why don't we totally redo our driveway and put a big burm on the north side of our driveway to prevent run off from coming down into our house and widen the south side and make it less of an incline."

 This picture doesn't look as extreme as the incline really was. It was quite treturous. No one wanted to visit for fear of sliding right into our house or garage and several close calls.

 We, especially me, were slaves to this *&^% bucket and leaky raingutter! It had to be dumped about every hour ALL SPRING to prevent as much water as possible from coming into our basement! We still need to do more work on the raingutter.

We faired okay, given that we just had to pull back the carpet and air it out MULTIPLE times on these two walls in the house. We didn't have to replace sheet rock or carpet, however we do have to replace some pad and have it professionally put back down, right now it is just rolled back in place.

So we survived the spring and the run off and put in our order to Lutz Construction to redo our driveway. Then we waited and the kids had a ton of fun in the summer using chalk art, blowing bubbles and riding their bikes and running down our driveway! Then in the fall the project was underway! I was sad about having to rip up my landscaping that I had spent so many hours on, but I tried to salvage as many plants as possible, minus the black garbage sack of some of my most precious ones that Cody mistook for weeds and throw them away!

Though these trees were not the prettiest, they were native, natural and a bit of a shield. I loved the fall colors and the wild flowers and was sad to rip these out BUT change is good and necessary! I did dig up and replant a bunch of the sticky wild geraniums and Cody tried to transplant some small maple trees and service berry bushes. We will see if they come back in the spring? Honestly, we had never been big fans of our driveway and we were excited to make the change!