Sunday, March 13, 2011

THE NEW (AND IMPROVED) DRIVEWAY

We moved to South Pasadena in 1985 (in July).  Since we bought the house, our driveway has been a challenge.  It's long, curvy, and tough to negotiate.  When the boys first learned to drive, we decided that if they could make it to the street without driving over the lawn - they could drive anywhere!

So many cars rolled across the lawn that the sprinklers were permanently squashed on the south side of the run.  In the summer our lawn always looked pathetic - no sprinklers - no lawn.  About a month ago, Charlie asked Paul Chen (our friend and contractor) to expand the driveway.  The photos below are the great result.  As an accidental aside, the neighbor behind our house has a strange property.  It's 600 feet long and 200 feet wide.  The neighbor actually lives on a perpendicular street, and the width of the property extends behind our house.  While Paul was working on setting up the driveway expansion, the neighbor decided to trip trees along our mutual property.  Apparently, the trees were the only thing keeping the fence at the back of our house upright.  Our south side neighbor John told us that the thought our neighbor to the north had his fence down.  No, it turned out their fence was fine - ours was tipped away at a 45° angle.  Paul added the back fence to the project - now all is fixed.  Here's the front drive photos.