Lol unfortunately not nearly that handy. thanks for the tip on Marvel but couldn't find the product there either. I never thought it would be so tricky finding these. I'll keep looking though:) thanks.

The stuff that I was able to catch was obvious - mostly areas where they didn't dig everything up and lay a new base as promised (they were only removing and replacing the areas that were in bad shape). The other major problem was with the areas where the driveway met other paved areas (walkways, garages). When adding 2 inches on top of an existing driveway, it is a lot of work to get things graded out so that the two surfaces meet and still have ~two inches of new material all the way up to the edge. My contractor tried to just scrape out a little bit next to those areas. If I had let them go, in many places I would have ended up with less than a half inch of new material over a not very solid base. I am sure those areas would have been a problem eventually. When I called him on it he got pretty mad, but he then dug and graded them properly. The truth is that a lot of what the contractor is going to do is out of your control. For example, the asphalt mix should be at least a certain temperature when it gets put down. How hot is hot enough? Who knows, but you aren't going to go out there with a thermometer anyway. There is a fine line between trying to make sure things get done right and antagonizing the contractor. The latter may be necessary, but only as an absolute last resort. Otherwise they are going to do whatever they can to just get it done and get out. What you can do is to ask the contractor about things when you get your estimate so that they know what you expect before they bid. As I said, you might not measure the temperature of the mix, but when you get the estimate you could ask them how far they will have to go to get the asphalt and whether that is close enough to allow them to get the entire load down while it is still hot. At least if you ask those sorts of questions they will know that you've done your homework. In the end though, you are going to have to trust someone to a great extent. If I am serious about a couple of contractors, I like to try to get references from them. Not just give me the names of 3 of your friends and relatives, but I ask for something specific - in the case of a driveway I might ask for a reference from someone in my area who had them replace a driveway of similar size 5 years ago. You could still get scammed, but in my experience (both at home and on my job) the honest people will try to get you a reference that at least partially matches your request and the shifty ones will just give you their standard references. Of course you have to at least call the references to find that out. I have to admit that I didn't follow my own advice with this contractor. A guy around the corner from me gave me their number after they did his drive and he was really happy with them. Then, I thought a guy I know was recommending them, but that turned out to be a miscommunication (long story). The moral is, don't skimp on the references. I hope this helps.

The last home we replaced the driveway on had to be done from scratch. When we removed the concrete there was no road base at all, poured over organic soil. As the excavator was digging the duff out, going down to undisturbed soil, we "found" the builder's garbage pit at the foot of the drive. He had done three homes in a row back in the 70's and used this one pit. By the time we had it down to undisturbed it took two full sized double axle dump trucks of pit run just to get to a point we could spread the road base. No wonder the old driveway had cracked and heaved over that area. $2,000 into that driveway before we topped it but you could land a 747 on it if it was longer.

Hi Helene, Your back splash is beautiful. We are putting up one very similar, and I found this thread when I did a search on how to remove grout from porous tile. Many of the other things you wrote were very helpful as well. I have a question if you're still reading. We are using Chiaro tile (seems very similar to your travertine) and it is quite a bit thicker than the glass tile we are putting above it. Even with a pencil separating the two, it seems like we need to put a thicker backing on the wall to bring the glass tile more level with the Chiaro. We've put up Hariboard (1/4 inch), and are thinking we'll just double it where the glass tile is. Did you do something to raise up your glass tile and make it more level with the travertine, or not. I'm asking as the way you did it looks good, and I'd rather not raise it up if i don't have to. Thanks for any help. Karen