Been a while...how about some driveway sealing!

So yeah...it's been a while since I have blogged...I have lots to post too. We always get little postcards in the mail on cheap driveway sealing. I always wanted to have it done since they are always quoting under $200. I looked up driveway sealers on Home Depot's website and read reviews on the latex-ite Ultra-Shield for $33. These were very good reviews. I actually got excited on doing the geometry to figure out how many buckets we needed. I came up with 1800 sq ft, and since it hasn't been done in a while I figured 1 bucket would cover 300 sq ft (300-400sq ft for unsealed, and 400-500sq ft for previously sealed). So I estimated that it would be about $200 to do it ourselves. So I bet the "professionals" would probably double that price (I also read some reviews where the quotes were a lot higher than their post cards they received in the mail.

***NOTE*** There are temperature requirements for this product. It should be above 55 degrees. It did get below 55 during the night but I am hoping we are fine (the postcard said "only 5 weeks left in the season", so if they are still doing it, I figured we could.

So after 4 years of living here we decided (okay, I decided) to seal our driveway so I spent a weeks worth of nap times pulling a billion weeds out of all the cracks in the driveway to ready it for sealing. Yes, a BILLION!  I counted... Then, while I hosted a small Halloween themed craft event at our house (me being the only one with Halloween crafts), my DG (dearest gamer) and his GM (gamer friend) put on the sealer. That looked WAY more fun than pulling the weeds. I wanted to do it but needed a babysitter, and alas, there was no one...Here is a before the sealing pic, after I weeded. I would be embarrassed if you saw how bad I let the weeds get.

The second pic is when they are just about done. I will give you some facts about what we did. I looked up driveway sealers on Home Depot's website and read reviews on the latex-ite Ultra-Shield for $33. These were very good reviews. I actually got excited on doing the geometry to figure out how many buckets we needed. I came up with 1800 sq ft, and since it hasn't been done in a while I figured 1 bucket would cover 300 sq ft (300-400sq ft for unsealed, and 400-500sq ft for previously sealed).

Upon going to the store, we decided to purchase the $23 latex-ite Airport Grade to save on the $$$. It comes with a 4 year warranty and since I am (desperately?) hoping to move in less than 4 years, we went with this product. We purchased 6 buckets, 2 squeegees, the $5 drill attachment to stir the 5 gallon bucket found in the painter aisle (the men had to run back before starting because the attachment wouldnt fit into the drill, so they needed an attachment for the attachment, and then duck-taped it...i don't know), a cheap pack of gloves, and a bottle of white caulk (that's for another project).

Now, I had read a LOT of reviews from the Ultra Shield, and I decided not to fill any of our cracks or holes. However, if you want to be a good DIYer, those items were near the buckets.  While weeding at the bottom of the driveway where the cars are always parked, I began pulling chunks of the old asphalt out. There is a large area that should be dug out and filled, however, since I want to move soon, not our problem. We purchased everything the day before and set the buckets upside down like other reviews said. But we mixed each buckets as we opened them.

I had a lot of people tell me how messy this was and they would ruin their shoes and such. It took 2 men about 2 hours to finish and they barely got messy. Maybe a small spot or two on the shoes. Worth the money and my time pulling weeds (never...again...)