New Driveway - Time to Landscape!

That ugly house I talked about in the last post also came with a ridiculously small single car driveway.

So begins the expansion.

This photo: view from the walkway, looking at the what used to be the driveway. Tearing up grass and moving the big stone in the front.

The pavers didn't exactly make a nice edge when the paved the new driveway. It was pretty wavy.

In this step I snapped a chalk line 90 degrees from the sidewalk, using the 3/4/5' squaring method (I used 6/8/10') and cut away the excess asphalt.

See those interlock stones mashed in with the asphalt? I'll be keeping those for later on.

This is why you're not supposed to remove the guard from an angle grinder. Especially a big ass Rigid 7" grinder. Sometimes they kick.

Don't do this at home.

Using the 14"x14" stones, I laid one at each end of the new driveway cut and ran a string from the outside of one to the other. Using a garden edger, I cut along the string into the grass and peeled away the excess grass.
Next came digging and grading the dirt to accommodate the stone screenings and sand base.

I (should have) used 6" of gravel and 2" of screenings, but I used 4" of screenings and 1" of sand. The key here is to get the sand so that the stone is flush with the driveway. I dampened the screenings and hand-tamped it all.
Then a layer of sand, dampened, and tamped until my hands literally bled. ..partly because of the stitches in my thumb.

I used 14x14 patio stones that look like
cobblestone because 1. It was available at Rona down the road, and 2. It was cheap.

Not too many cuts were necessary - only one angled at the sidewalk and a straight cut at the top of the driveway. If you measure and fit ahead before you cut away the driveway, you can make all fit together perfectly ;)

With a little bit of tapping, keeping the stones even with each other and the driveway is pretty easy if you tamped the sand evenly.

Remember those interlock stones I said I'd keep for later?

Not pulling up and relaying the whole walkway was the goal here so I cut away more grass and dug, screenings, sand, tamped, and pieced it back together. Some cutting was necessary so I PUT THE GUARD ON THE ANGLE GRINDER and tried my hand at masonry. You can judge my cuts in later images.

2 bags of polymeric "magic" sand, poured into the gaps. Swept over, tamped to jiggle the sand into the voids, and then swept over again. Then I soaked it with water to activate the polymers. Feel free to judge my cutting.

This is my first landscape job ever. I would do a few things differently next time but in the past two winters only one stone has heaved slightly.

That's it! New driveway with cobblestone banding.

HMU with questions and comments.