Washout regraded and paved in one day

David Drew was seven months into bringing a 1960 house back to life when the grading for his new driveway and metal garage washed out.

The edges of the building's concrete pad had eroded as much as two feet deep, gullies two feet wide ran down the hill, and the gravel and fill dirt had ended up in the yard. He also wanted his existing driveway joined to the new one with a sweeping entrance and exit, and no hard 45-degree turns.

The call

David called Jimmy on a Friday, and Jimmy came out to see it on Saturday. On Monday morning the crew arrived with dump trucks, a skid steer, an asphalt roller and a paving machine as wide as the street.

The work

In three hours the skid steer recontoured 200 feet of driveway and repaired the whole perimeter of the 40 by 30 foot building, with the crew following behind with shovels and rakes to fill holes and keep the edges smooth. ABC gravel went down next and was compacted until no stones stuck up. When the blacktop arrived, seven people worked around the paving machine, checking levels, keeping material flowing, filling low spots and keeping the edges sharp.

The result

By 5 pm the driveway was finished, smooth and transitioned the way David wanted. He watched a family business at work all day, two brothers, their father and two of their sons, and said the driveway made the most dramatic change of anything he had done to the house.