Being a Sport (Or Why Driveways and Drainage Are No Fun)

There is a lot to be said for being a sport. I think of a sport as someone who knows how to roll with the punches, who plays fair, can be a team player or a leader, and is up for whatever happens next. In the south, calling someone a sport can have multiple connotations. It could mean someone who has a sense of fun and adventure, a sense of humor, and is likely to say, “Hey y’all, watch this.”

I think I am usually a sport as found in the first definition, and occasionally in the second definition if I am in the right company and if vodka is involved. However, in the last several weeks, my sport status has been tested a bit.

We live in a nice sixty-year-old house built into a wooded hill off a major road in Nashville. We have lived here for twelve years with very few issues. Earlier this spring our long, narrow driveway began to crack and fall away on one side. The excessive rain this past winter took its toll. Without going into pages and pages of details, we hired a paving company and they began to replace the driveway. They expected removal to take two days. At the end of the first day, the owner of the company explained that our drive was ten layers thick in some places. Removal took a week. They also discovered that there was never a proper base laid when it was originally built in the 1950s. The estimate for how much it would cost and how long it would take was revised. A lot.

We knew we had a drainage issue because groundwater took out the driveway. We knew we had water in our garage that we planned to deal with “one day” thinking that the crumbling driveway was more important. Last week, our paving contractor came to us and explained that our drainage issue would not wait. Drains had to be installed before the driveway could be finished.

So, today we are four weeks into a driveway rebuild and there are two men with Sawsalls cutting down my beautiful and healthy euonymus bushes. My hydrangeas can be moved, but there was no saving the mature shrubs that have graced our back yard for decades. For the first time, my good sport facade is beginning to crack.

It is going to be fine. Actually, it is going to be a monumental mess with tons of mud and large machines digging twelve feet deep into my back yard. Our fence has been removed so we have to take our elderly, blind, deaf dog out on a leash for the foreseeable future. I finally got hydrangeas to grow and bloom and now they are being moved right in the heat of late May. Being down to one dog, and having hired one of those “we can make grass grow anywhere” companies to seed and feed my back yard, I finally had grass grow exactly where they are digging. (Nothing is going to make grass grow between my wall and patio. That ground has been cursed.)

At times it feels like we are in a bizarre game of dominoes where just when you think you have all the pieces standing up, one topples taking all the other with it.

With all that whining done, I have to say we have been extremely fortunate. We hired the right paving guy (Richard Stanley, R and R Paving) who has been nothing but professional and forthright with us. His team is great, hardworking, fun and nice. We found an excellent contractor to do the drainage issue. (John Trusa, Barrier Waterproofing Systems) He was able to fit us in between much bigger jobs and work began today instead of in six weeks. That is a miracle. If all goes well we will have a foundationally sound, dry garage and effective drainage in a matter of weeks. The gravel of the driveway had to settle anyway, so by the time the drain guys finish, the driveway guys will be ready to come back.

I could have written twenty blog posts documenting this process. I will probably write a few more before it is done. Being an unemployed empty nester has been great as I have spent a great deal of time researching who and how to address these issues. By the way, I have learned the single best resource is the Better Business Bureau website. Search what you need to have done and they will tell you who has A+ ratings. I have also been home when someone knocks on the door to show me what they have discovered and why that is a bad thing. (And yes, it is always a bad thing. They don’t come to get you when it is a good thing.)

I recently ran into a lady I had met once in a group. She said, “Oh, I know you. You are the lady with the driveway.” I just nodded yes. I may have a shirt made that says “I am the lady with the driveway” or eventually “I survived the great driveway disaster of 2019.”

So, I am going to take the nice men who are destroying my back yard some ice water, put on my big girl panties, and find some way to laugh about all this. If nothing else, in a few months it will all be done and we will have a great story.