A New Driveway

I got the call to say the drive was done! YAY! 

It was like Christmas morning as a kid, I was so excited, I couldn't wait to go up to Kaiwaka and play with my new toys! Well in this case... go and drive on my new drive.

This has to have been one of the more exciting moments so far! A new driveway!  

It's awesome to see some progress... albeit just a driveway... but progress!

Up until now, our land has just been a bare paddock. We did not even have a gate to enter the property! We've had to negotiate a poorly built fence to climb over to get onto our land.

We had a couple of local contractor's price the job. We didn't have much of a budget for the drive.. I allowed $2000, but both quotes came in around $5000.  

So we've managed to negotiate a price of $3500 for a smaller and simpler drive.  The drive is about 40 meters long and we required a turning area at the end. The top soil had to be scrapped off, and a good base of crushed limestone was to go down, along with a small culvert installed at the top of the drive. I also asked the contractors to give a "light" scrap over the building site and to level a small area for where the water tank is to sit.

Although to save some cost... I have to deal with the top soil they scrapped off.  For now the soil is left in about 6 very large heaps.  See the pic's below.  But I have some ideas on how to use this soil.... we just need to move it! Anyone want to lend a hand??

I'm very happy with the job done.

TIP: When dealing with contractors, get at least 2 quotes as a bare minimum, get the quotes in writing, and have the contractors explain in full detail as to exactly what the quote includes. Make sure both you and your contractor fully understand what is being provided, so there are no miss-understandings at the end of the job.

After the house has been built and the contractors/builders trucks have finished onsite, and once the new limestone has compacted down, we will have to do some more work to the driveway, but we will work that in with the landscaping.

 But for now... I have drive... and I can now drive onto our land! AWESOME!!!!!

UPDATE: Just like magic we have delt to the dirt, by hand....