Welcome to my blog. My name is Deborah. About 15 years ago, I bought an old home. We worked with several contractors to rehabilitate it, but ultimately, the foundation simply wasn't stable enough, and we had to tear it down. After that, we worked with a construction crew to build a home from the ground up. The experience was exciting and challenging, and I learned a lot through that process. I want to share construction and contracting facts and information with others so I decided to start this blog. I hope that you like the results, and I thank you for reading. Enjoy!
Concrete is a cost-effective material to use for driveways. It can be cast as one enormous slab / surface, but there are alternatives to make sure that your concrete driveway is an attractive feature of your home.
Using individual concrete slabs
You can have your driveway cast in any number of slabs, which could be arranged in a pattern to give an aesthetic appeal. You also do not need to think of a concrete driveway as necessarily being the usual grey colour of dry concrete. You can use stained concrete to give the drive a different look and feel.
Use a concrete overlay
You can revitalise an old driveway by putting a relatively thin overlay of concrete, which will change the look of the driveway, but not be as solid as a fully concrete drive. Overlays often have a sheen, which will give your driveway an unusual look.
Using stamped concrete
The one truly useful alternative you have to make your concrete driveway more attractive is to use stamped concrete. This is concrete that is patterned so that it looks like other materials. It can be used to mimic the look of surfaces like stone or brick, but at far less cost. Different colours can also be used to give a stamped concrete driveway a different look and feel.
One of the simplest ways to use stamped concrete to ensure that your driveway is attractive is to use different shapes in the concrete. You could choose to have a repetitive pattern of complementary shapes. If you add a border to the central patterned section, the driveway will certainly become an attractive feature. This effect can be taken further by using concrete of different colours, especially as part of the pattern.
A stamped concrete that has the look of slate lends a natural feel to your driveway. If your driveway is lined with bushes, or intermittent bushes, then this will complement the slate look. There are a variety of patterns of stamped concrete that look like brick paving, but which are much cheaper than using real bricks. You can also get stamped concrete that looks like pebbles, which can create a historical feeling of cobblestones. It is possible to have the concrete stamped in a way that resembles flagstones, which can create an atmosphere of history for your home.
If you want a creative and unusual look for a relatively short driveway, especially if your house has wooden window frames, you could use stamped concrete that looks like a wooden surface. You can also combine two looks, such as that of wood and bricks, which will give your driveway an individual aesthetic appeal. For more information, talk to a professional like Aclass Concrete & Landscape.
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