If it is possible to deploy light strings, you're not limited to low voltage. Would your envisaged lighting scheme provide sufficient light? Figure out if it is possible to deliver the requisite voltage and current to the furthest end first. There are low voltage wiring gauge calculator available online for that purpose. Environmentallights.com has one.

What about repairing cracks in asphalt? The cracks I have at the edges of the driveway have been patched with the crack filler tubs you can buy at HD but they always seems to spall up and reform the cracks. Would the cold patch stuff form a better bond? or is there a better product? It would take too much caulk so the tubes of driveway caulk won't be cost effective.

I'm not a granite guy or a carpenter, but i am a machinist and fabricator of steel and aluminum parts and equipment. I haven't seen the chip in the granite personally, so I'm not sure how it really looks, but I will say, that some people are very easy to work for, some a little less so, and some are impossible to make happy. No matter what, no matter how much you've paid, no matter how experienced your guy is and how many 5 star reviews he has, nothing is ever perfect. Myself, I tend to roll with things, I won't gripe about it unless it's really heinous, and a lot of how I react depends on the difficulty of the job and the effort the crew put in. If they're hung over every day, or smell like they had a hydraulic lunch, that just isn't going to work. If they bust a$$ every day, do good work (is the rest of the job good quality? Are they on time, prompt, or do you have to constantly call them and ask when they're coming?), act like professionals, I realize things happen to the best of them. And I act accordingly.

We have the exact situation. We removed the grass, dug out more of the lawn, about three inches wide and placed a form flush with the grass. There will be about a six to eight inch trough depth between the pavers and the form. We used rocks or rubble and poured dry cement between the rocks and sprayed the cement with water. We let it dry and repeated layer by layer for about five inches, The last three inches we mixed the cement and poured the final layers to the level of the pavers. We added a few decorative rocks in the cement for effect. We left the forms in place. The repair was approximately twenty feet long. The result is the grass edge is the same depth as the rest of the lawn. Nice green edges!