Removing the driveway

Charta Vitae

Started: 2025-08 and still going

I thought this would be a lot easier. The house came with a concrete pad occupying about half of the back yard. Best I can tell, there used to be a shitty falling-down garage there, and before the house was listed, someone pushed it over and hauled it away. So what we had left was just a concrete foundation / parking pad / driveway.

Now of course, not being a driver (in fact being an anti-driver), I had no use for this. Really, less than no use. The driveway reminds me of cars and car-culture and on those grounds alone, I soon wanted to purge every square inch of all that from the property.

So anyway, this had been sitting in my head for a few months as something I would do one day and then I had a particularly frustrating day at work and I bought a sledgehammer on the way home. It took quite a lot of smashing before I started feeling better, and the progress was slow. It turns out there was another layer of concrete underneath the top layer. Hard stuff to crack!

And as it further turns out, beneath the second layer of concrete was about a foot of crushed slag. Bad stuff. Not a single worm or root to be found. Entirely dead.

Neighbours came by and speculated that this activity would hurt the “property value”. It might, to be fair. People with enough money to buy a house generally also have cars. But I’d like such people, once we eventually shove off to have to pay for that choice directly, not have it built into the cost of something nice like a house.

We’ve removed three dumpsters of concrete and slag so far. There’s a lot more to go.

One day this will be my fertile little Eden.