New Driveway for Our Old Victorian

I'm sharing these photos from last September when we regraded and resurfaced the driveway at our Victorian House.  I'm standing in the street out front.  You can see we have a large front yard.

In this photo--to the left of the house is an old lilac, that covers up the view of the two story garage/woodworkingshop/art studio.

I moved my camera position to the bottom of the driveway.  2011 was the second season for new trees. 

 We kept the older leaning tree for the time being as it provides some shade relief for the new trees.  A year or two from now we'll eliminate the leaning tree. 

We are so grateful to our neighbor--a good friend for re-grading the driveway.  He has some impressive equipment.  

After the regrading was finished, he brought in the compactor.  The compactor made the entire house rattle including the old windows.  So much so, several pictures fell off the downstairs bedroom dresser, and the kitchen clock crashed to the floor. 

Then three semi loads of crushed recycled asphalt arrived, and our neighbor used his tractor with grating equipment to spread the crushed asphalt.  The last step was the return of the compactor--vibrating every antique window in the house.  The compactor work took about 30 minutes.

The result is amazing.  (Sorry, I didn't take a finished photo).  The crushed recycled asphalt is a smooth durable surface and is quite nice looking.  Now there is plenty of room in front of the new garage to turn around--making a complete circle and allowing for extra parking.

The crushed asphalt cost about $1500, and our landscape contractor friend's work was a gift to us.  And quite a generous gift it was--for in fact he spent the better part of his week working on our driveway.   He saved us thousands of dollars on this project.  He and hs wife are wonderful people.  There must be a hundred ways to say wonderful and they are all of them!

I scrubbed the front porch, new steps, and concrete, getting ready to paint the steps.  Ooops, I must have been side tracked to do something else; I never got the steps painted. 

I do remember spending an hour now and then some afternoons rocking on the porch last summer--gosh I sure miss those warm days.  When I look at these photos of the lawn I think about the hours and hours of lawn mowing we do.  We have six acres.

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I worked in the art studio this week. 

Finished two coats on the woodwork, and now doing the cut-in painting of the walls. 

What?  Repainting the walls????  Yep.

I decided to change to a gray with brown under tones. 

My other reason for repainting?  Because the previous paint was eggshell finish and wasn't washable. 

When I tried to wipe off the grime of construction it left the wall surface looking burnished. 

The new color is a satin finish and is washable. 

I'm very satisfied with the new wall color and will share photos very soon.