Driveway Part I

3 October 2009

It's high time to start on a long-awaited project of ours. Le driveway. Believe it or not, after all these months that we have been residing here, we irresponsibly parked our car on the nature strip.

Please do not tell the council.

Red gum sleepers

8 out of 10 spec home owners have concrete driveways. I have to agree that concrete driveways are by far the most convenient of all, as they are needless to say, durable, neat and low-maintanence. Here however, we have decided to go unconventional with the driveway.

Weather worn grains

Having alternatives usually bump up the prices. We planned to use railway sleepers, not because we are driving a bloody train okay, but just because we like the characteristics of well-worn aesthetics. Believe it or not ~

goodbye, cliches ...

Anyway, the sleepers were ordered, delivered and D set to work about them because I could not move those darned sleepers a single inch. Yes, they probably weigh about a tonne each, to me at least.

hello, backaches ...

We shall 'sleeper' our driveway and our entry platform. For the platform, D made a shallow indent to the grounds, before positioning the sleepers accordingly.

In position

6 steps to the house


Now, just moving 1 of these hefty things is enough to make me call it quits, so I do not know where D summoned the strength to continue working on the driveway ...

One by one

Before the laying of the sleepers, we had some levelling to do. Our house, you see, was ever so slightly lower than the road, and there was a gradual slope from footpath to Garage. We have previously filled it up with gravel but now, we found out that it was too high. So we laboured to remove all excessive land, before D dragged the sleepers into place.

Levelling

Ingeniously, D conceived of the idea to use fishing lines as a levelling device. Its a hazard to the workplace though, as the line is semi-transparent and I almost tripped over it a couple of times. Eating gravel is not fun.

21 down, 9 more to go ...

I do acknowledge the fact that it looks a little messy at the moment.

Steel anchors courtesy of B.

Our dear neighbour came over one noon and asked us a very good question, "How are you going to stop the sleepers from moving when you drive over it?" to which he answered himself, "Use the steel offcuts that I've in my shed got as an anchor. You'll need my awesome jackhammer!" ok, he did not exaclty said 'awesome'

It was then we decided that B is the best sort of neighbour anyone could wish for. The beautiful thing is, he always comes with two stubbies in his hands ... And if you ever need any of his superawesome special power tools, all you need to do, is to appear on his doorstop, with two stubbies in your hands ...

Two weekend's worth of work

*** superawesome ***