A good job (almost) done

I've wanted to widen our driveway for a while, and for various reasons the importance, and therefore priority, of doing it during the two weeks I was off work became greater. Amongst the list of things I wanted to do while I was off, this is pretty much the only task completed, but frankly, it's been done well. 

Gone are the old, ugly, slabs, with their dip towards the road; out have come the slabs to the sides that were all tilted in, and grown over by vegetation; cut a foot wider is the garden wall, which did give me a very good excuse to buy an angle grinder. 

Instead, the base has been cleaned up, and levelled slightly; a couple of old blocked-up drains cut down; the central concrete bit patched (had thought of demolishing that, but easier and cheaper to keep it!); the old slabs repurposed and cut (angle grinder!) to create new edging; new weed control sheeting down; plastic gravel grids put in place; and a tonne of gravel shoveled into place.

There's tidying to do - the end of the wall needs smoothed off, the side slabs backfilled, loads of stuff to go to the tip, some more hedge and grass control to be done, and just some tidying up as the gravel settles (I've got a little left).

Not the most exciting of blips, but a pleasing one, and one which in just such a small, but simple, way will make life easier and a little less stressful.

One of the reasons was people across the road parking like eejits, despite speaking to them three or four times about how parking directly opposite our drive made it so very, very difficult for us to get into our drive, despite there being plenty room just 3 yards forward or back for them (one comment I got back, from the tenant's mother, was "Well, she should be able to park directly outside her house"). She bloody well still could!!! On one occasion there was an immobile Ford Focus outside that I ended up getting the keys to, and physically pushed it back, just 30cm to make parking easier, and even going to that effort didn't get it into their heads about how much of an impact their parking had on us. Oh, and the driveway could fit at least 5 cars (the previous tenant must have been a mechanic of some sort and had something like three Transits parked down the side and back) but they only ever parked one of 3 or 4 cars on the drive itself. Anyway, it was somewhat ironic that on the 2nd or third day of demolition the folk over the road moved out....

I saw a couple of different visitors viewing the house while working on the drive. One turned up in a Volvo XC90, and parked in a way that made it difficult for people to squeeze by with other cars in the street. The others turned up on bikes. I might be biased. I know who I want to get it.

Post-finishing the driveway Keats got out of the garage for the first time in about a week (to clean off the dust from the angle grinding), and promptly had his aerial fall off. I mean, I know owning an old car means there are a lot of things that need doing at any one time, but I hadn't expected that....