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!

Sidewalk to nowhere

We have a sidewalk to nowhere running along the side of our back yard. Before our renovation; there was a side door that would take you from the house to this sidewalk; but we said goodbye to that porch in December, 2015! We have no need to have a sidewalk leading from the corner of the house to the alley on that side. So, I did what anyone would do & asked our contractor if he had a jackhammer I could borrow. He didn't have a jackhammer, but he did have a roto hammer; which is a jack hammer's baby cousin.

Before. My goal was to rid myself of the
sidewalk all the way to the alley.
Don't mind the improvised
wooden walkway next to the sidewalk....
the backyard is a huge mud pit when it rains.

 I had a lot of fun playing with the tool; but my Dad came to the house to help me equipped with a giant pick & sledgehammer. He & I could pry the side walk pieces off of the ground together & get them out of our way in 1 piece. His way was better than mine, which should not shock anyone who knows my Dad! We were able to remove about 40% of the sidewalk, including a patch I had removed last summer/fall. Huge bonus? Beautiful (if very muddy) brick was hiding under the area we cleared! 

After- check out that pile of bricks on the left (in the
foreground). Those were our reward for pulling up the old
sidewalk!

The other 60% of the sidewalk was another matter entirely. It was significantly thicker (8-10 inches thick versus 2 inches for the other area) and more solidly constructed. I had a major roto hammer fail. It took me an hour of working the machine over this area to effectively scratch the surface. Wah, wah! The rest will need to be completed by a professional using a bobcat equipped with a jackhammer. My borrowed tool really couldn't hack it! At least I tried though, right?

Roto hammer fail :( Notice how the sidewalk is still there??
I gave it the good ole college try though - there has got to
be something said for that!

Tree Trimming

 It might be the understatement of the century to say the trees around our house really needed to be trimmed. It could've been 25 years since they'd been done!

My 80 year old Dad; a total rockstar

My Dad helped me trim some of the most offensive branches from the front of the house (they were resting on the porch roof....yikes). While we were on the flat roof, we cleaned all of the small plants out of the gutters along with the typical gutter gunk. Did I mention yet that my Dad is the best? Because he is (see above re: gutter gunk).

Why wouldn't they??

Chris had committed to a charity golf outing on the day I figured I could work on the exterior of the house; but he made sure to swing by with a friend or two to show them the house. Note their mode of transport :)

After- view from 2nd floor

After - Front view

Once our tenants moved out, we hired a professional to remove the dead/diseased trees in the back & heavily trim/prune everything else. We love how big the sky in our yard seems now!

Thankfully though, little Lizzie got a chance to swing in the hammock before we had to remove those trees!

Before- Little Lizzie Lounging

Before- where is the house?!? How 'bout the touchdown tree?

The backyard feels so much bigger now that the dead trees & overhanging branches have been removed. We had to get rid of the funniest looking tree we'd ever seen, pet named (by us) the "touchdown tree", which wasn't ideal- but it was dead as a door nail - so out it went!. The only bummer? Where will we hang the hammock now?!?  Thoughts are welcome!

After - backyard