One of the problems we had with buying the new house was the fact that it was difficult to get Hobby the motorhome on the drive. We could in fact do this but the front wall made it tricky manoevering him into position. Additionally, the shingle didn't help. The wheels span out and made a bit of a mess.
We decided that half the front wall had to go to make reversing onto the drive better. If possible the shingle should be removed and a hard driveway inserted. We had a quote of approx £5K from someone who didn't bother to come back and measure up properly. Also they said they couldn't get the imprint stamp to match the old driveway.
We noticed that a driveway was being put in further up the street. It looked as if they were doing a fair job so we asked them to come and quote for our. The The company, Summit, came in at £7K which was a bit more than we thought, but they said they would be able to get it completed before we went to France.They also said they could match the imprint style of the old drive.
They started very quickly and cleared the area, and put down the core base. After a week of waiting for an answer about the imprint style, which was in fact, no longer made, we decided to go ahead with the nearest match. In fact it was a good match but not exactly the same. This was a slightly worrying time becasue we had heard the company were good at not returing to finish the job completely. Money hadn’t changed hands and communication was still OK so we weren’t all that worried.
The concrete came and was smoothed out, printed with the template and sealed with a red tint. Job done and it looked good.
We came back from France and all was still good except that there seemed some white stain in some areas. This was posibly due to the salts coming out in the concrete and the rain water pooling in that area.
The trouble now was that the old part of the drive looked tired and different in colour being about 35 years old. The quote for another £1500 was declined. We bought 10 litres of red laminate paint for £125 and started to do it ourselves. The colour wasn't exactly the same but we considered that as both parts of the drive aged it should eventually match up.
The main benefit now is that we can reverse Hobby on to the drive with ease. We can plug him in, clean him, fill up with water and do maintainance work all from just outside the house which is awesome!
Slideshow of the work progress here:
