Driveway Wars

Today we started Reno Week at the Hibners and the first phase was the driveway.  It looked pretty straightforward to begin with.

Dave and his friend (and ours) Duke, rented a Bobcat to remove the thin layer of concrete that collapsed years ago and was mostly submerged.  Here's Dave now arriving with the Bobcat. 

And here's Duke and Dave staking the grade.

 Then Dave and his Bobcat got to work.

After removing the two inch slab of concrete which we expected, he encountered a 6 to 8 inch slab of concrete which we didn't expect because it was completely hidden under the thin layer.

Surprise!!!!!

And now the process of digging out the much thicker layer of concrete began.
 Dave and the Bobcat worked very hard and sometimes it seemed like Dave was asking just a little too much of his trusty helper.

And sometimes the work arena got a little crowded because while we're trying to install a driveway, the city is trying to install sidewalks in the same area.

 But they've worked together well so far.  Next our driveway base arrived. We'd increased the order twice as we realized how incredibly deep we were going to have to excavate.

And although some of us were working very hard, there were others who just enjoyed the show.

 Almost everything was impacted - the flower beds, the ancient basketball post, and the evergreens that we planted years ago.  Big credit goes to Duke and Dave though because they took the time to transplant our favorite evergreen which is known for it's slow growth.

We had an agreement with the city that they'd pick up our building materials.  I'll call them tomorrow to let them know we underestimated the massive amount of concrete and hopefully they'll still pick it up.
Meanwhile back at the house, Dave and his Bobcat were still hard at it.  Not only did we encounter two layers of concrete, but there was no base material under the original driveway - just very wet, unstable clay. 

At this point, all the concrete has finally been removed.

So the next step is to compact and try to amend the clay with enough base material to stabilize it.

 And this part of the project kept us busy late into the night.

Finally we had to call it - not because our stalwart workers couldn't have gone on but because we have elderly neighbors and our equipment made lots of noise.

Tomorrow, we order more base material, beg the city to pick up the concrete we removed, and hopefully pour our new, much needed driveway.