Advice worth reading before you spend

Written to save you money, not to fill a page

Most of what gets written about driveways and masonry online exists to rank rather than to help. These articles are here because the same questions come up on nearly every estimate, and because the answer usually decides whether you are spending a few hundred dollars on a repair or several thousand on a replacement.

The recurring theme is that almost every failure in this trade happens underneath the surface, where nobody looks and nobody photographs. If you read one thing before getting quotes, make it the difference between a repair, a resurface and a replacement, because that single distinction accounts for most of the money in a driveway decision and most of the disappointment when it goes wrong.

The articles below are about asphalt driveways and paving, which is what we get asked about most. More will follow on patios, walls and steps.