We got home from Maine late on June 8th and drove in on our new driveway. It was beautiful. We inspected it the next morning. They did a great job. The area that meets the concrete of the garage floor was smooth and there was no sigh of blacktop spilling over onto the concrete. However, the edges of the driveway were angled to meet the ground at almost 45 degrees. As our neighbor Reggie told us, we would need to edge it with crushed limestone to keep it from crumbling if someone drove over the edge.
After the asphalt had time to set, dad started with the crushed limestone. It was delivered to the end of the driveway and kept dry with a big blue tarp. Reggie was out there right away with his big Rubbermaid wheelbarrow. He and Dad worked on spreading the limestone for days. This included the edges of the entire driveway, all of the edges in front of the house and the inner border of the turnaround. They used eight yards of crushed limestone. It seemed like too much at first but it kept settling. Finally it was all spread and the ugly tarps no longer needed. By this time Dad decided that Reggie’s wheelbarrow was much superior to our old-fashioned one so we ran out and got one. The next part of the process was to compact the limestone. Reggie had this all planned in advance. He asked the neighbor,John, at the end of the block, to use his truck to fetch a rental compactor. Reggie even built a little wheeled platform to make moving it around easier. John generously insisted on operating the machine while Dad and Reggie managed the hoses. The compactor made the crushed limestone almost like concrete and it solidly protected the edges of the blacktop.
Now it was time to spread mulch over the limestone, to cover the bright white surface. The mulch was delivered on July 28 and 29. Six yards didn’t go as far as we thought it would so we had to get four more. Again Reggie appeared with not only his wheelbarrow but his ten-pronged fork. Actually two ten-pronged forks. This is the perfect tool for spreading mulch, about 18” wide with a rather short handle. Reggie ended up giving his second fork to Dad. The first six yards were in place by the end of the morning. The final four yards came next the day. It was finished just in time for a big thunderstorm. We got over two inches of rain.
Reggie had been telling us since we moved in that he was going to build a mailbox post with a package box. We kept telling him that we would wait until the road was repaved. So now he was anxious to get started. He showed us his extensive workshop in his basement. He actually had already built the mailbox posts for all the other neighbors on Indian Oaks so he knew exactly what to do. He and Dad went out to the lumber store and got the wood and Dad and I went to get the actual mailbox. Reggie went right to work. By the 21st it was installed. The mailbox is the only thing that looks different after all of that!
