A new driveway & LOTS of machines

 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.

Just too tempting not too. My father-in-law
wondered if I have a new career path!

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.

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.

Bobcat delivery on Saturday

The old driveway before the demolition
got started

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!

Lots & lots of heavy equipment in the backyard!

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!

Old driveway is gone - bobcat is
grading out the space to make way for the new

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!

Finished forms

Dad checking out the fancy new driveway...
or is he wondering why it looks nearly
identical to the old driveway?!?

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!

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!

Water Service Upgrade

Dig dig dig

Everybody likes good water pressure for their shower, right? With that in mind we updated & upgraded our water service pipe to accommodate the addition of the master bathroom and a dishwasher to the mix of water using appliances in the house.

Well, we didn't need that hole after all.
Fill it up!

The City rips a hole in the street to give access to the valve that hides under the parkway. I guess this is where our water will be turned off if we stop paying our bill....yikes! It is also where the water department turned off our water when we had a pipe burst earlier this year. Yes. With virtually no pipes in the entire house.....the one pipe that could possible burst, did. Hello water spraying all over the few things we stashed in our destroyed basement. Not ideal. At least that pipe is now a thing of the past :)

I think our neighborhood was kept safe
with this use of 2 orange cones.
Here we go digging the 2nd hole in the
driveway.

Back to the present: the city decided they couldn't run our new water service from the first hole they dug into the street (because it might damage our beautiful parkway tree - I don't want that - I like the tree a lot. Also because it would be running too close to our sewer line. Yuck.) Soooooo they dug a second hole in the street and tore open part of our driveway for good measure. There is no reason to have just one hole in the street/on your property when you could have three. Am I right? Insert visions of dollar signs here as the costs begin to increase :(. Oh well, nothing to be done!

Keeping our parkway tree safe with orange fencing.
Lots of orange happening today.

There are the 2nd & 3rd holes that were dug. Why just dig one when you can dig three??

I was sad to miss this action, I was in Colorado with my big sister & littlest niece (which was abundantly awesome & wonderful - wouldn't have missed that trip for all the house stuff in the world :), but between my Dad & our contractor- I was fully informed of the progress. Thank goodness they were willing to send some photos too!

The little machine fit perfectly in our driveway. The 3rd hole
is right behind the digger.

Sweet bricks! Price was right: free!
Well, given the chunk of change we paid for the water
service upgrade.....maybe not exactly free.....

Bonus of the multiple holes dug in the street (which we are on the hook to pay for :(? A pile of very good looking red bricks! Thanks Dad for scavenging for me. I think I know where I get my love of trash to treasure!

Ta da! Here is what all the fuss was about:
our new water service in the basement!