Street progress!

This morning at 7:00 am I was awakened by the sound of a buzz saw. No, it wasn't Spouse's snoring, although he often sounds like a buzz saw. It was an actual buzz saw, slicing off about 15 inches of our stamped concrete driveway.
From having attended the street planning meeting I knew this would be the result of the city's decision to 'straighten the street'. They had to remove the 15 inches of driveway that will become the edge of the new street.

Once that was done the grinder showed up. This machine basically slices several inches of hard or soft surface, grinds it up, and places it onto a long conveyor belt that dumps into a trunk to be hauled away.

Here's a close-up so you can better see what it does.

Although the 'straightening' of the street resulted in loosing some of our driveway, it will also result in regaining some of our yard. When the street was initially paved the contractor must not have measured it correctly because they rounded the corner too sharply and paved over a portion of our yard. This is being corrected and we will get that part of our yard back.

The photo above shows the area we will get back. See that area of dirt/sand/gravel where the man in the blue jeans is standing on the far right? That is the approximate location of where our yard will extend to once the street is finished.

Here's a wider view of the grinder shooting into the bed of the dump truck.

It was kind of exciting to have all those guys working here yesterday. After so many weeks (which felt like months) of no progress, yesterday's noise, dirt, and flurry of activity was a welcome change.

I'm trying not to get my hopes up for a quick completion, despite all the progress made today. We're supposed to have rain tonight which will make the street a muddy mess (again) and the workers won't return until it dries up.

It is definitely encouraging to finally see some progress, which feels like a small light has been found at the end of a very long and dark tunnel.

Crush du Jour: Craig Robert Young