When we embarked on the planning phase of this project with our architect, Tom, we had a few requests about the exterior of the house: lose the side porch on the west side of the house, build a new one on the east side (where the driveway is), keep the driveway for off street parking but shorten it to make way for a hefty (aka hardworking) side porch.
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| Just too tempting not too. My father-in-law wondered if I have a new career path! |
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| Too tempting not to....Chris driving the Bobcat on Sunday |
Welllllllllllll, the City of Evanston Zoning Department had other ideas. As it turns out, a driveway (in Evanston) must terminate a parking pad. The parking pad can be no more than 30 feet from the rear lot line. In our case, this puts our parking pad smack in the middle of our backyard! We didn't realize it, but we had a parking pad already - it was hiding under an awful lot of gardening paraphernalia and had a layer of weeds growing on it.
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| May, 2015: in the background of this photo you can see the area that is our "parking pad" it was covered by a lot. I was in no way exaggerating! |
So, the good news? After the Zoning Department rejected our building permit application because our plans were in violation of the above referenced zoning code, Tom did a quick redraw. The new (& thankfully approved) drawings show our driveway being rerouted around our slightly narrower porch. Chris & I have been calling it the "S curve".
The bad news? Since this was a change made after we signed our contract, none of it is included in the price we planned on paying! Wah wah.
It was fun to watch all the machines work on our property though! Check out the photos to see the progress they made starting Saturday April 16 and wrapping up by Wednesday April 20! Any toddler in your life would've loved these work days! The neighborhood kids sure did! We had the bobcat, mini bulldozer, dump truck, pumper truck (to pump concrete from the mixing truck into our crawl space which was also getting finished), cement mixing truck, along with an equipment truck & 3 pick up trucks. Our street is small. Our yard is small. We were overrun with giant vehicles!! Honestly though? It was really entertaining.
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| Bobcat delivery on Saturday |
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| The old driveway before the demolition got started |
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| The old driveway with the planning of the new driveway. You might be struck by how similar the old and new look :) |
Here is a video of the mini bulldozer
working with the bobcat to pull up the old driveway piece by piece!
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| Lots & lots of heavy equipment in the backyard! |
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| I didn't think things in the backyard could get any worse.........and then a 4.5 foot high dirt pile rose up in the middle of all the chaos. That was decidedly worse! |
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| Old driveway is gone - bobcat is grading out the space to make way for the new |
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| Chris is admiring the concrete forms that are part way put up. The forms require an inspection by the City of Evanston. I guess it is easier to adjust the forms than the concrete once its poured! |
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| Finished forms |
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| Dad checking out the fancy new driveway... or is he wondering why it looks nearly identical to the old driveway?!? |
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| We are for sure the classiest house on the block. The crime scene caution tape is really sealing the deal! But- here it is! The final product! |
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| Of course we did :) Though not in the driveway, we put our initials in the sidewalk that was patched on the other side of the house. Because concrete is forever...... or 100 years or so! |
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