We have a Driveway

It is surprising to me how excited I am about a lightly sloped path of rocks. We are should hear back from our bank later this week about our appraisal, to see if we officially get approved for enough money to fund our project. In the mean time we decided to go ahead and get a driveway put in, so we can start enjoying our land.Here is what steps it took to get a driveway put in on our land.

What size and where + get a permit:

We decided to get a 125' drive with a 30x50' level pad so we can have some room for a camper and a few other cars. The hope is to have this pad as a parking area in-front of our house, when we end up getting it built.For the permit: I ended up calling Park Co building department who redirected me to the Environmental Health Department. I was surprised that driveways are actually under a different department then building permits. After finding the right person to talk to, they explained that I would need to fill out an application that she emailed me as well as making a rough drawing of our planned drive. Here are the items they needed us to do for Park Co.• Email filled out application and rough drawing of proposed driveway• mark land with address numbers (I just barrier a 4x4 with our numbers tacked onto it)• mark the center line of the proposed driveway with flags

Note: in Park county the drive has to be 18' wide at the road and no less then 16' wide the rest of the way. With a max slope of 10% grade.

Find a company & get rolling:

We decided to use a company to install the drive. Anyone that knows me knows, I would usually attempt to rent some equipment and go do all the work myself. But, since we live 2 hours away and I have a full time job. We decided to have a local company do the work ;( I know, sad.But, it was pretty great... We hired a local company, sent them the permit, marked where we wanted the drive and the pad to be. And magically, a driveway appeared on our land. I know what you are thinking, "of course it did, you paid for a company to do it, why wouldn't it be done." Well we currently live in a "fixer-upper" in Denver that we have been remodeling the last 5 years. We have pretty much redone the entire house and I think we only hired someone to do 3 things on the entire house, so I am used to having to have my own blood, sweat and tears (yes, I am a 33 year old man that cries sometimes) be shed to get anything done. So, having a driveway just appear on our land is magical to me.

And enjoy...

One quick note, the company we ended up going with used 4 layers of different size rocks and warrantees our drive for year from the date of installation. Some other companies we got quotes from didn't seem to communicate about any of these details. So, when you are shopping around make sure to ask lots of questions.