You guys mind if I post more pictures? :W
I didn't think so. :B
Things are shaping up around here! The exterior painting was finished this week. The painter did a very good job, almost as good as me. :) I'm very pleased with it.
It looks like the rest of the house now. All the asphalt around the garage really took a beating during this project. The heavy trucks damaged it quite a bit, and it got a lot of dirt and rock ground into its surface and concrete splattered all over it. I spent several hours last weekend pressure washing it in preparation for the paving and sealing I'm going to have done.
Still need a garage door and the driveway paving down here.
The tarps are protecting the slope from the thunderstorms until I can seed it with some rye grass for the winter. It's been too stinkin' hot up to now to plant grass seed, but I think this weekend it'll get done.
I'll need my tall ladder to clean those windows.
Still a lot of work to do back here. Sealing the wall, drain pipes for the gutters, backfill, and rebuild the block retaining wall so it dead-ends into the cinder block wall in the "stepped" area. I've got an idea of how I'm going to do that, but it's going take a lot of hand work to make it happen.
And this is how it looks from what's left of the back patio. The long range plan is to remove the rest of the concrete slab and replace it with some type of pavers, and rebuild the deck that's over it so it extends under the french door in the new room over the upper bay. The grade will be raised up to about where the top of patio slab is now.
This is what I'm hoping will be the last big truck to come backing down my driveway. He's bringing the asphalt to repave the driveway to the lower bay, and patch up all the potholes and damage in the old asphalt.
The paving equipment is staged, just waiting for the material to get here. The paving company that's doing this is actually the same one that I had pave the driveway down into the backyard 14 years ago. I like the owner, and really felt like I got a good job the last time. The asphalt was in pretty good shape until I started this project.
I was happy to find that he was still in business. They say asphalt is about 40% cheaper than concrete, but I didn't even consider concrete for the driveway so I don't know if that's true or not. Concrete just didn't seem appropriate for this.
After they spread and compacted some SB2, I backed the truck and camper into the lower bay for the first time. I've been waiting a long time for this! :B
It looks good in there.
The view from the upper bay. It's no longer just a dream.
The truck dumps its first load into the paving machine's hopper.
They move it into place to start the job. I'm having them pave a short "dog-leg" off the driveway that I can use to turn around if needed.
And they get started. :B
Starting at the lower bay apron slab. The owner is standing on the concrete, and his nephew is operating the paving machine.
Refilling the hopper.
They had the truck driver dump the rest on the upper surface so he could go on to his next job. The asphalt will stay nice and hot up here. It was about 100 degrees that day!
Blending it in to the old driveway. I'm also having them widen the driveway in this curve. The bigger trucks were running off the edge here and damaging it. I could use a little more room myself.
I've always enjoyed watching asphalt paving. Such an interesting operation.
Rollin' rollin' rolling"......
And whacker packin'. Note who is riding, and who is having to muscle that machine on the slope. Ownership has it's privileges. :C
Packing the curve.
Fixing one of the damaged areas.
Ready for traffic. I've already tried out the "turn-around" area and it works just fine. I don't have to roll off the end of the asphalt at all.
I had the upper bay apron surface poured about two inches higher than the asphalt, anticipating that I'd be repaving this area sometime in the future. For now, I'm having them just form a short ramp for me.
The curve is nice and wide now.
All the asphalt in front of the house is about 40 years old, and had many areas that needed repairs, so this was the right time to do it. I wish I could afford to repave it all, but that will have to wait until another time.
After patching all the potholes there was still a fair amount of material left over, so I had them form a wide hump here to help divert rain water from flowing over the upper surface.
I was really going out on a limb doing this. Didn't even check with the boss first! :B
Paving's all done. I'm having all the old asphalt seal-coated now.
The seal coating rig.
Getting started on the upper surface. This job goes surprisingly fast.
All the asphalt to about this point was laid about 14 years ago.
In front of the house. This was all laid in 1975.
Finishing up.
I can finally take the camper off the truck again! I'm glad we went with the 18 ft. wide door. This would have been a tight squeeze with a 16 footer.
I'll have more room once I get all the lumber scraps, garage door parts, and other stuff off the floor.
The view from the entry door into the house. I'm glad we put those windows up high like that.
The 30 amp RV plug.
And a 15 amp plug for the Battery Tender I have mounted on the truck.
I'll be able to move the camper back a few more feet once the garage door is installed.
I'll build some proper stairs here after I get the walls sealed and painted. For now I'm using the ladder I made to get into the attic over the main house.
I've been using these 4x6 timbers to set the camper on since I first had the driveway extended into the back yard. I think I'm going to continue using them in the garage. They make loading very easy because they give me a parallel guide to follow. The space between them is just a few inches wider than the rear tires, so as long as the tires aren't touching the timbers, the camper is centered properly over the bed. The screw eyes and ropes in the top surface were for tying a big tarp down over the camper. Those were the days!
I'll update this again when the big garage door is installed, and that will probably be "The End" of this project as far as most of you RV'ers are concerned. I'll have several years of evening and weekend work to do ahead of me though, so I don't think I'll be sitting around getting bored. :B
:):)
