September 2001 - Pat & Patty Shaw 2 (Galena Territory)

Now that we have a full year of the "Home of the Month" under our belt, we thought we would highlight an interesting project from the last twelve months. The Shaws are our first property to repeat in the "Home of the Month". Their entire landscape was featured in November 2000.

The work shown below is unique in our experience. It is also the coolest project we’ve done this year (please, no irate phone calls, Gentle Reader, the pickup load of mulch we put in your plant bed was the 2nd coolest project we did this year). Basically, the Shaws asked us to install large native stones (3’ – 6’ long) into the ground to create a giant flagstone parking and turnaround area at the top of their driveway. As you can see from the photos, the stones are approximately 12" thick with some individual stones weighing over a ton. In fact, the stones used for the drive weigh over 50 ton. While we have installed many walkways and landing areas made of this type of stone, the Shaw home was our first driveway.

The below photos show the process we used to install the stone. Because the stones had to be set into an existing driveway footprint bordered by the home walkway, the garage and a retaining wall, we measured the exact size of the area. We transferred these measurements onto our quarry building concrete floor. As you can see, we used the concrete wall of the building as a proxy for the garage. Also note the peninsula of stone on the left side of the photos. The rectangle created by the stones in this area exactly fits the Shaw’s front walk. Brandon, the foreman on this project, then located stones that would fit well together and that would fit the existing driveway footprint exactly. His crew also numbered each stone with paint so that we could recreate the same pattern once we moved it to the Shaw’s property (we were going to name each stone because numbering seemed so impersonal, but we didn’t want to grow too emotionally attached).

Once the puzzle was filled in, the stones were trucked to the site. The existing drive was then excavated and the stones were installed by the numbers. Through a rare alignment of the planets, the stones actually fit perfectly into the existing driveway. The Shaw’s had us install soil and grass between the stones for a "softer" look. Clean chip stone could have been used as an alternative to the grass.

We would like to thank the Shaws, a second time, for allowing us to show you their landscape.

PLEASE CLICK ON PICS TO ENLARGE.

Link to November 2000 "Home of the Month" (Shaw #1)