Heeey everybody. This has been a BUSY few days, however I have some great news! We FINALLY got our driveway installed this past weekend! I have to say, we had to wait a lot longer than we’d like, but it did happen.
The Original Plan
If you have been following, you may recall that we originally wanted to use an access easement on the other side of our property. However, there was a utility pole smack dab in the middle of the easement (we talked about that in “Easements and Road Frontage“). It would have been quicker to use this way because the clearing would have been very minimal, but alas, things in life are never easy. Because of the cost of moving the pole, we opted to move to plan B, which turns out to be a good thing.
The New Plan
Plan B involved cutting through overgrown vegetation that required a LOT more work. This was going to be on the to-do list, but we just had not expect to move it up the list so fast! While going this route ended up being cheaper than moving the utility pole, it presented it’s own logistical nightmare. In the blog post, “Driveways & State Maintained Roads“, we talked about how the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) required the installation of concrete culverts. Doing this required us to get the culverts there to the property, however, the companies we found would not deliver them. If we found someone who could deliver them, they could not place them on our property because of the roadside and ditch depth. Lastly, we thought NCDOT had to install the concrete!
As it turned out, bonded and insured contractors do this sort of thing all the time. As long as they put in the appropriate culvert as required by NCDOT, everything is all good. So, at the suggestion of the company we used, this what we did. We found a local grading company and they did the job in just half a work day! They got the concrete culverts there, installed them and graded the first half of the area too.
The Future
We will have a grading company to come back out again to bring some more crushed concrete or asphalt later to spread further up the driveway. It was truly a gratifying time to see the end-result because the anticipation leading up to it was insane! Next up, we have to install a chained gate with No Trespassing signs, but we’ll talk about that later. With that being said, I wanted to share some photos and a video of how things went, along with the final driveway. Enjoy!
The Gallery
The Video