An early success

I’ve worked on a lot of projects over the years—for all my adult life, actually. Ever since I shifted to Hamilton, the number of projects has increased, and I had to do them alone for the first time in decades. Four year ago today, I finished one that turned out far better than I’d knew at the time.

On May 1, 2020, right after the first Covid lockdown restrictions were relaxed, I finished a project to lay stones in a sort of trough between by driveway and the footpath leading to my front door. I blogged about it at the time, which is where the photo up top is from, and that post was actually an update to a post from the previous weekend, a post where I talked about the project in detail.

I was reminded of this today by a Facebook “Memory”, and it was kind of hard for me to believe I finished the project four years ago—this is one of those times it doesn’t seem like it was even nearly that long ago. However, Facebook also served up a “Memory” from two years ago today in which I noted that the rocks I’d put in the trough had settled a bit since I put them there, but less than I expected. It turns out that now, even after two more years, the rocks never settled more, so I never did add larger river stones—I didn’t need to.

In the four years since I first put the stones in, delivery vans and trucks have driven onto the rocks (especially trucks for Countdown/Woolworths), and park their trucks on the lower part. This has caused absolutely no problem apart from occasionally dislodging a couple stones I have to kick back into the trough, but that’s it. There’s also no sign of damage to the concrete edges.

Because of where that trough is, I often get out of my car and step onto the stones, or if I’m dropped off by someone else, I walk over the stones to get to the front door. I’ve never tripped, nor has anyone else.

I think it has performed so well because of the time and care I took to get a good base course down: I gave it a solid, but permeable, foundation. The stones themselves help to distribute the weight of any vehicles that partially park on them.

My project also gave me exactly what I wanted: A few extra centimetres of driveway width, which people (especially delivery/courier drivers) have used, while not adding a lot of visual clutter. Houses around me with similar troughs usually have them planted with shrubbery of some sort. I didn’t want that because I’d have to maintain them, and I didn’t think they’d add anything, particularly because the front of their houses is flat and level with the street, whike mine has a gentle grade down to the street level.

There are negatives, though: The two bags of larger river stones I bought for the project are still stacked up behind the pillar at the top of the trough, their labels faded by years of sun and rain. If I tried to moved them now, I bet the bags would fall apart. I still hope to use those stones, but I also still haven’t worked out a plan for out front, partly because The Damn Raingarden is so very ugly (it looks like a concrete cattle trough) and, if that wasn’t enough of a visual crime, it’s also off centre in the lawn.

In may of 2022, I published a post called “My 5 favourite home changes”, which was only about changes I paid others to do. While those are still my five favourite things others did, there are plenty I’ve done that were good, too, and those stones are a good example. Maybe I should do a follow-up post about the stuff that I’ve done myself, because that clearly never occurred to me before.

At any rate, I know that the project in the front yard out far better than I knew at the time. Most of the projects I’ve done myself have turned out at least as I expected, and a few, like this one, turned out much better, and that ain’t nothing. I really should make a list, though.