I did some research this morning...

...on the cowboy workers next door with their imprinted driveways.

I was awake very early, and so in bed I meditated and stuff for an hour. And Popeye was totally chilled out on top of me. I managed to reach my phone and took a photo in the pitch black of him...he was so relaxed he was light as a feather...

Then I remembered I hadn’t put my rubbish wheelie or recycle out, and they can come before 7am. It was freezing. A very hard frost in the night.

When I got back in bed I am wide awake, so made a cuppa, and decided to find out the name of boss man of the cowboy driveway firm to write to, so I can complain about my dividing wall and the concrete dust ruining the paint work on my car.

I looked on their website, the name was on a van that came a few times. For the purposes of this post let us just call the name of this firm IMPRINT DRIVEWAYS (but, this is a pseudonym).

On IMPRINT DRIVEWAYS website, it says it just does driveways in Wales. The website proclaims that unlike England...
“In Wales there are no restrictions on the area of land which you can cover with hard surfaces at, or near, ground level around your house.”

I checked the government site for Wales in this matter, and it appears this is not true, and the regulations to be pretty much the same rules as England in the restrictions on concreting over your garden. There has to be somewhere your water can run off, and NOT into the road. You cannot cover your entire property with concrete where there was no concrete before. You can only replace what was there before up to so many feet with concrete.

Looking at IMPRINT DRIVEWAYS website again, there were reviews. Brilliant reviews, absolutely fantastic amazing 5 star reviews all mentioning the same man’s christian name. But NO date on the reviews. So I copied and pasted one of the reviews and did a google search. I found the site where these amazing 5 star reviews were, all mentioning IMPRINT DRIVEWAYS and the same man’s name as being polite and courteous etc etc, but they were ALL written 5 years ago. This search also brought up a You Tube video made by IMPRINT DRIVEWAYS in 2013, which was a video of stills of pictures of beautiful finished imprinted driveways. No voiceover. No words of explanation.

So, still on the IMPRINT DRIVEWAYS website, I look for their address. (I am thinking of writing to the firm because of my wall foundations which they exposed and the damage they did to the paintwork of my car.) The website gives their address but just as a road and postcode. No house number. But I know that road is a single track lane with a couple of passing places and no houses. So I put their road address and postcode in google, and google maps gives me this single track lane near a passing place, but no house. I go along the whole road on google maps but no house not even away from the road.

192.com and my BT phone book (I don’t have a landline phone but BT put the phone book through all doors) has no listing for IMPRINT DRIVEWAYS.

Then on IMPRINT DRIVEWAYS website, it says “We are fully insured. View our policy details”. Clicking on that link takes me an insurance site which does NOT give me any details of IMPRINT DRIVEWAYS insurance, but invites me to add my details for an insurance quote. I check out the actual insurance firm themselves on google, and there are many reports the insurance firm is a scam.

I have every alarm bell ringing by now, so, I check Companies House (gov.uk) to see if IMPRINT DRIVEWAYS are legitimate traders, and to get a name of who runs the firm (because there is no name on the website of who runs the firm). And guess what, IMPRINT DRIVEWAYS (as I said before not their real name but a pseudonym for the purposes of this post) are NOT registered with Companies House.

IMPRINT DRIVEWAYS website is cleverly done to make is look valid and legitimate.

NOW, I did say yesterday that at dusk the previous day I had seen the workmen for IMPRINT DRIVEWAYS putting away all their tools and stuff, but in a different van. And the workmen for IMPRINT DRIVEWAYS also got into this van. And when I realised it was a different white van with a different logo on it, I grabbed my iPad and took a photo before they all left. I have just taken a look at that photo and checked out the logo and name. For the purposes of this post I shall now call this second van the name of CHARITY RENOVATIONS (this is a pseudonym).

I check out by googling CHARITY RENOVATIONS and their logo, and the website said they did a lot of charity work, charity building renovations etc etc, all charity stuff. Their address is not in this area but in England quite some distance away from here. Quite an impressive website. But I am suspicious straight away. So I google Companies House (gov.uk).

CHARITY RENOVATIONS was started up in 2011. There was the director and the secretary. I had a look at a few of the PDF’s over the years of the stuff that was registered at companies house. Something didn’t add up over their accounts. The Charities Commission and Manager (gov.uk), and various others must have though so too because they are named in the notification to this director guy being ceased to be a person with significant control. And the final form in Companies House (gov.uk) is of liquidation of CHARITY RENOVATIONS which happened earlier this year of 2018.

So, neither of these firms exist for trading or doing work or imprinted driveways. The CHARITIES RENOVATIONS white van was smart and clean (that I saw), and had this smart black logo and printing on the side of the van. (I won’t be believing any details or contact details I ever see printed on vans ever again)

Now, it could be these two vans with IMPRINT DRIVEWAYS and the other with CHARITY RENOVATIONS printed on them were bought as they were by these imprinted driveways cowboys that did the driveway next door. And that they have nothing to do with either of the two firms I have mentioned above with pseudonyms, even though they were using both vans.



So, I don’t think I am going to get very far with writing to IMPRINT DRIVEWAYS at an address that doesn’t exist to express my concerns over the damage done to my car, and my dividing wall.



I looked at a couple of You Tube videos at imprinted driveways that were done properly and I think the work done next door has missed a couple of vital important stages during the installation of that imprinted driveways and patios. Also the reputable firms on You Tube used many many imprint mats at any one moment of time that fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle. However, the IMPRINT DRIVEWAYS firm who did next door’s imprints in the concrete had only a total of 3 rubber mats, the size of doormats, which did not fit together as a jigsaw and were dropped onto the concrete willy nilly, which must be why it all looks rather shallow and out of alignment. And also I think that the colouring to bring up the colour of the concrete driveways and patios at the end has definitely not been done, nor has the sealant/protective stuff been done.

At the end of the day, this is not my work that I have had done, but the fact it has impacted on my dividing wall and my car paintwork which is why I took an increased interest, especially when I saw the workmen leave completely when they had earlier told me the final stages that were left to do, and those stages were definitely not done.

I am still hoping (for my neighbour’s sake) they will return and finish the job, maybe they will. But maybe he told them not to do the last few stages, I have no idea. It is not my concern how someone gives instructions to a driveway firm on their own property. I cannot ask my neighbour because he is still keeping out of my way since his initial not very nice outburst to me at the beginning (it upset me badly), when I approached him politely over my car paintwork and wall problems due to the workmen doing his driveway, and also I had politely said I would have appreciated knowing this disruptive work was being done so I could remove my car to safety (my car was in my driveway within a few feet of the drilling up concrete work). My neighbour made it abundantly very clear he didn’t need to inform me of any improvement work he was having done...


Be aware of online scams and check every single thing you can before you employ someone to do a job for you, especially a mammoth task as this that took over 2 weeks, and probably cost your life savings.

Take care x

N.B. Again note that IMPRINT DRIVEWAYS and CHARITY RENOVATIONS are pseudonyms. There may be more to this than I am able to research and I don’t have all/enough facts.

All I initially wanted to find out was a name and address of the imprinted driveways firm who was doing the work next door to write to about my concerns of my wall due to their work and the damage to the paintwork of my car. But that name and actual address was unavailable.