driveway problem -- laying the entire driveway again..not happy!!
Samharris
9 years ago
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9 years agoyayagal
9 years agoRelated Discussions
Help--Circular Driveway planting bed is ugly
Comments (28)All I can say is Wow! I am so excited to see the changes and the mock-ups. I was dying to get on the computer yesterday but I didn't get a chance. Thank you so much pls8xx and laag, those pictures are so helpful and really make it easier. A picture is truly worth a thousand words! pls8xx, the yard looks great, I think this is the best the house ever looked. Can't wait for hubby to see the pics. He was looking at the spruce's this morning and saying how well they were growing (they really are). I hope I can twist his arm to change things. I definitely like the look of the loop with the wall around it and the stone wall on the left. We were thinking of doing a stacked wall on the left of the drive. Laag, what is the change you made from the original pic? Is the drive wider on the left side of the loop to encourage people to look there, and drive there? As for the circular drive, it will stay some circular shape as it is a good thing if it is wide enough for a car to park on the side and other cars to get by- which it is. We have triplets who have their friends drop by all the time and we need a lot of parking. We have other parking but they do so much better with the loop. you would be surprised how many people (even adults)can't really drive with their cars in reverse. For some reason I like the grass border, I think it keeps things less formal looking. It does set the plantings off. While the front of my house is more formally landscaped, I don't want to make it more so. I also think that the grass border around the bed gives people some mistake room so they wouldn't hit the wall when driving. I love the look of the mortared wall, but I am not sure we can afford a something like that. Do you think we can achieve a similar look with a stacked stone wall, I think the mortared might look better? Would stacked stone even go with my style of house? I have looked around at driveways and most around here do not have circular drives as space is pricey and lots are usually small. A lot of drives have a curve but only so you can get in and out- there is no parking. I know we have to work on the circular shape and straighten out that sharp curve on the left of the loop. Do you think that a "circle" shape bed would be good or should we do a more free-form bed? (or is that a taste thing?) We have planned to use Pennsylvania blue stone (slate looking) for the pathways and want to border the beds and driveway edge with those paver things. The blue stone is something was has been used with the old houses around here so we want to try and keep with the feel of that. If only we could do it all right now! Does anyone do hardscaping? What parts have to be done first, can the jobs be staggered and done in stages? It would be so much more affordable to do it that way. Also, am I the only one who thinks the height of the house needs to be brought down and softened? Won't deciduous trees do that or am I totally off the mark? I have looked at a lot of landscaping and I have noticed that people have trees really close to their houses as foundation plantings. It looks really nice, but I thought that was a bad thing to do as the tree will have to replaced when it gets larger or it will need to be trimmed a lot. misslucinda, I laughed when I read your post. I hate to redo things so I want to do it right, it is funny that I only saw the plantings in the bed and not the real problem. Now I have so many more variables.........I am SO glad that I posted this question. Could you imagine if I had redone the bed and still hated it. Hubby would have killed me. It bugs him when I move some perennials so you can only imagine....See MoreCircular Driveway
Comments (8)Thanks so much for the quick response. I guess part of my problem with the house looking stark is coming from a more treed area, I'm new to Colorado and am dearly missing trees! Compounded of course with the problem that the few trees we have are dying, as you mentioned aspens are short lived, particularly at 5,000 ft. We have quite a bit of room on the side of the house, unfortunately I didn't take a picture, but the existing driveway widens out in front of the garage. There's plenty of room to pull out of the garage and turn around, even if there is a car parked in the corner) There's also a path between that area and the front door. But almost noone ever parks there. I think people are worried about backing back out the driveway, particularly if there's more than one car, it can be tough to turn around. I'm not sure if lighting would help, and we are pretty restricted on what we can use. So people opt to park on the street. I've layed out the plan and I think my biggest problem is I gravitate towards more formal, symmetrical layouts and it just doesn't work with the site plan. I realize the house isn't symmetrical (frankly I almost didn't buy it because of that, the stacked double bays on the left drives me crazy, I keep thinking of a way to break up the expanse, but that's for a different thread) In my head, we could use the existing driveway and then sweep across the yard and then terminate pretty much where the island is now, it's about the same distance from the center of the door as the existing driveway is on the opposite side. With smallish trees at the entrance, exit and then flanking the front door (probably crabapples as they do well here) It "works" so to speak on paper and I like the idea in my head. I'm just worried that I'm trying to force a symmetrical plan on a nonsymmetrical sight and it will look goofy when it's actually there....See MoreHelp with our site plan! Where to put the driveway!
Comments (11)Unless the entire lot percs equally, the septic location (and well) is the first thing done, and then the house and drive location work around that. Doing a site plan any other way may leave you open to a pretty expensive system, or possibly even won't allow you to build if the soil doesn't perc enough for the amount of bedrooms planned. During the boom when subdivisions were sprouting in old cotton fields faster than the cotton once did, we had a subdivision where a bunch of houses went up without a soil engineer's report. When it came time for the builder to put in the septic, the health department denied the permits because of the soil conditions. The builder couldn't afford the suggested community based treatment plant, went bankrupt, and those houses sit there like ghosts, unable to be occupied. If a soil engineer's report was part of the original package when you bought the lot, and you've got a good idea of where your septic can go, then you can probably do the site plan first. But, I'd want the 100% sign off from the Health Department first before having a single machine start scraping back topsoil....See MoreHelp! Came home from store JUST NOW & driveway has been demolished!
Comments (36)Ha! I hope this doesn't happen to you either! We're getting prices for pavers now. If we can't afford the whole thing in pavers, we'll do concrete with some kind of nice looking border (stamped or pavers). I have a landscape designer doing the planning so that I don't mess it all up and it ends up looking haphazard. Gotta move some trees, beds, build a new front walk. It's all connected. This mistake has messed up the timing, but maybe it'll end up a good thing; forced me to start the project....See MoreDLM2000-GW
9 years agooaktonmom
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9 years agonhb22
9 years agoSamharris
9 years agoDLM2000-GW
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