Extend Your Driveway And Add Curb Appeal With An Affordable Solution

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A lack of driveway space can make everyday life inconvenient. You get home from work and realize that your spouse or kid parked too close to the center of the driveway, forcing you to park on the street. In fact, the issues related to narrow driveways are more than mere bother — they can even negatively impact your home's curb appeal. For instance, your tires veer off the driveway slightly after a rain, and now there's an ugly rut in your lawn. It's not an easy fix. You have to fill the rut with fresh soil and sow grass seed. Instead of spending big bucks pouring more concrete to extend your driveway, you can solve this problem in an afternoon with a few bags of crushed rocks. Lay the gravel either side of your narrow driveway to extend its width.

To prepare for this DIY project, buy several bags of rocks. You can prevent costly errors when landscaping with gravel by purchasing crushed rocks instead of pebbles. The former tends to be more stable than the latter. For each 25 square feet of 2-inch deep driveway extension, you'll need about eight 40-pound bags of stone, which cost about $7 each, depending on where you shop. Next, purchase a roll of Vanver Heavy-Duty Landscape Fabric. This permeable synthetic material comes in large rolls 300 feet or longer. You probably won't use it all up on this project alone. To make the roughly $70 purchase price worth the money, store the spare fabric away safely for other garden or backyard jobs. You'll also need a pack of Orbit Drip Irrigation Micro Stakes from Lowe's, a mallet, a measuring tape, a spool of string, a tarp, and a shovel. Most shovels will do the job, but a flat shovel works best.

Ready to upgrade your gravel driveway to increase your home's value? Before you get started on this front yard renovation project, you need to plan out the final product. Place stakes in the ground at regular intervals to mark how far out from the driveway that the gravel strip will extend. You can extend the strip out however far you need to accommodate your tires and your driving skills. Use your measuring tape to make sure the strip maintains the same width throughout. Then connect your stakes with string. There will be a clean demarcation between the grass, the driveway, and the gravel strip, so this should be appealing to the eye. Stand back, check the width, and make any adjustments before moving to the next step.

Use your shovel to dig down into the lawn or bare ground between the driveway edge and the line of string, placing the dirt on the tarp as you work. The resulting trench should be about two inches deep. Cut some landscape fabric to fit the dimensions of the trench and lay it down flat. Pound the micro stakes into the fabric with the mallet, securing it to the ground. The fabric serves a couple of purposes: it blocks weeds and keeps your pebbles from digging deeper into the ground every time you drive over them. Remove the string and fill the trench with gravel. If you want a clear division between the rocks and the lawn, edge the trench with bricks or large stones. Your gravel can either match the driveway in color or create an interesting contrast. Or you could say goodbye to boring concrete with a bold, dazzling driveway design: using sparkly salt-and-pepper gravel.