I have sealed the same 900 square feet of shop apron three times with three products, and only one was worth the Saturday. The first was a cheap acrylic that looked glossy for a season, then went milky in the…

Every rollback that brought me a car dragged its tail coming in. The drop from my apron to the gutter pan was about two inches over a short run, steep enough that low tow decks and lowered cars scraped on…

My back pad measured 19 feet across and I called it a two-car pad for six years. It is two cars right up until somebody has to get out. Park a crew cab on one side and a sedan on…

Three bids on the same 640 square foot driveway came back at $5,100, $9,900 and $15,400. Same slope, same access, same week. The low one was asphalt, the middle concrete, the high one interlocking pavers, and none of the three…

In July my first ticket prints at 4:40 in the morning and the truck is loaded and gone by 5:15. By ten o’clock I have stopped putting flatwork on the board, and anyone calling in a driveway pour for one…

There is a line across most steep driveways here that you can find with a hammer and a probe rod. Somewhere near the middle the ground changes: undisturbed shale and stiff clay on the uphill half where the hillside was…

My father-in-law keeps a five gallon bucket of blue pellets inside his garage door in Squirrel Hill and treats it as a household staple. Every December he throws a coffee can of it down the driveway before he backs out.…

Last spring I set up in the street in Mueller and, while the boom was folded, watched the owner two houses down park a 34 foot Class A motorhome. It cleared the apron fine. Then the rear duals came onto…

Last March we tore out and repoured a 620 square foot driveway three blocks off Barton Springs Road in Zilker. The old slab was four inches, no steel anywhere in it, and a pecan root had lifted one panel close…