A patio is the job people plan for. Steps, walkways and driveways are the ones they put up with for years and then fix all at once, usually after somebody catches a toe on the third step down or a crack finally runs the whole length of the drive. They belong on one page because underneath they are the same job: a hard surface that has to sit still on Georgia red clay while people and cars move across it.
We build all three in Dunwoody, Sandy Springs, Brookhaven, Chamblee, Doraville and Peachtree Corners. Every job is quoted after a free site visit, because what a driveway costs has far more to do with what is under it, what has to come out first and how a loaded truck reaches it than with its square footage.
What actually fails, and it is almost never the surface
When a walkway sinks at one end or a driveway cracks in a long curve, the pavers or the concrete are rarely the problem. Something moved underneath them.
Our red clay is not the expansive kind that heaves slabs in central Texas. It is mostly kaolinite, which does not swell much as it wets and dries. What it does instead is hold water and refuse to let it through. So the failure here is not swelling, it is a saturated subgrade with a load on top of it: water finds its way under the edge of a surface, sits in the clay, and the base slowly presses down into softened ground. Six months later, one corner is an inch low and the water has somewhere new to collect. From there it accelerates.
That is why the first half of a site visit for a driveway is usually spent looking at everything except the driveway. Where do the downspouts land. Which way does the yard fall. Is the low corner low because of the grade or because it has been sinking for four years. If water is the reason a surface failed, replacing the surface without dealing with the water buys you a few dry seasons and the same problem. Some of these jobs turn out to be drainage work with a small amount of hardscape at the end of it.
The base is the job
Almost all of the labour in a good walkway or driveway happens before anything you can see goes down.
On clay we separate the base from the subgrade with a woven geotextile. Without it, the fine clay particles work their way up into the stone over a few wet years and the base quietly turns into dirt. It is a cheap material and it is the difference between a driveway that is tight at year twelve and one that is tired at year six.
Then depth, and this is where the three jobs part company. A walkway or a patio carries people, so four to six inches of compacted aggregate over a prepared subgrade is usually right. A driveway carries a vehicle, and a vehicle concentrates its weight on four small patches, so a driveway base is roughly double that, more where the subgrade is soft or where a delivery truck will turn. Anyone who builds your driveway on a patio base is saving a day of work now and handing you a repair later.
Aggregate goes in in lifts, a few inches at a time, and each lift is compacted before the next one. Filling a twelve-inch excavation in one pour and running a compactor over the top of it compacts the top four inches and does nothing at all to the bottom eight. Then the edges: a paver surface needs a restraint at every open edge, because pavers do not fail in the middle, they creep outward at the perimeter and open joints behind them.
Front steps that feel right underfoot
Steps are the one piece of hardscape where the numbers are not a matter of taste. People climb stairs by feel, and the foot expects every step to be identical to the one before it. The residential code Georgia builds to holds risers to a maximum of about seven and three quarter inches with treads of at least ten, and it allows very little variation between one riser and the next within a flight, on the order of three eighths of an inch. That tolerance exists because an uneven riser at the bottom of a run is exactly where people fall. Four or more risers and you are into handrail territory as well.
Landscape steps out in the yard are a different animal. They are not attached to the house and they are not a code stairway, so we build them gentler on purpose, closer to a six inch rise with a wide, generous tread. You take them at a stroll rather than a climb, and on a slope they read as part of the garden rather than as a fire escape. The rule that does not bend is consistency: every step in a flight the same, and a level landing wherever the run gets long or changes direction.
The other thing worth deciding early is light. A flight of steps that is fine at four in the afternoon is a hazard in December at six, and running low voltage lighting while the steps are being built costs a fraction of what it costs to retrofit once everything is set.
Walkways people actually use
Before we lay out a path we look for the one that is already there. There is nearly always a worn line across the grass between the driveway and the front door, or between the back steps and the gate, and it very rarely matches the walk the house was built with. That line is the path people want. Fighting it produces a handsome walkway with a dirt track beside it.
Width matters more than most people expect. A three foot walk is a single file walk. Two people walking side by side, or one person carrying something with both hands, wants four feet or a little more, and the difference in how a front approach feels is out of all proportion to the extra material. Along the way the walk needs a slight fall across its width so rain leaves it rather than standing on it, and it needs somewhere to go at the bottom that is not the garage door.
Driveways, and the strip of it that is not yours
Most people are surprised to learn they do not own the end of their own driveway. The apron, the piece between the street and roughly your property line, generally sits in the public right of way. That means the city has a say in what happens there, and in several of the cities we work in that is a separate approval from the one that covers the driveway itself. Doraville, for instance, treats right of way encroachment as its own permit type rather than as part of a land disturbance permit.
It matters because the apron is the part that fails first. It takes every turning vehicle, it sits at the low end of the slope, and it is where the city truck runs over it. If your drive is fine but the last eight feet are broken up, that is usually a conversation with the city rather than a full replacement.
Gravel is a legitimate answer in the right spot, and in Dunwoody it comes with conditions: gravel drives need a durable border to hold the stone and a concrete apron where they meet the street, and the gravel counts against the hard surface limit for a street facing yard. The details for that city are on our Dunwoody page.
The tree beside the driveway
The most common way a driveway project kills a mature tree is by being three feet wider than the old one.
A big oak keeps most of its feeder roots in the top foot of soil, spread out past the edge of the branches rather than in a tidy ball around the trunk. Widening a drive means excavating a long trench along one side of that root plate and compacting whatever is left. The tree does not die that season. It thins over three or four years and then a limb comes down, and by then nobody connects it to the driveway.
So when a widening is the request, roots come before layout. Sometimes the answer is to widen on the side away from the tree. Sometimes it is a parking pad set off the drive rather than a wider drive. Sometimes it is two paved ribbons with planting between them, which is an old idea that has come back for good reasons. And sometimes the honest answer is that the tree and the driveway you want cannot both exist, which is worth knowing before anyone signs anything.
The permit side varies sharply by city and it catches people out. Brookhaven requires a permit for any tree four inches in diameter or larger, which is a small tree. Sandy Springs sets its threshold much higher for most species but protects flowering understory like dogwood and redbud at a far smaller size. Chamblee looks at specimen trees. We check before the excavator arrives, not after.
Materials, compared honestly
Poured concrete is the cheapest way to cover a large driveway and it is genuinely good at that job. Its weakness is that concrete cracks, always, and all you get to decide is where. Control joints put the crack where you chose. If it cracks somewhere else, the repair is a patch that will never match, or a full section replacement.
Pavers cost more up front and behave better over time on ground that moves, because a paver surface is flexible. It settles rather than shatters, and a settled area can be lifted, re-based and relaid with the same pavers. If a utility has to be dug up under a paver drive in eight years, you get your driveway back. Under concrete you get a patch.
Permeable pavers sit on an open graded base with no fines in it, so rain passes through the joints and into the stone rather than running off the surface. They are the right answer more often than people realise around here, and not only for the environmental reason. Several of these cities limit how much of a lot can be hard surface, and a permeable system changes that arithmetic. The stormwater side of it is covered on our drainage and grading page.
Flagstone is the one to use where a walk is short and seen close up, on a mortared base for a front approach or set in a bed of stone dust for a garden path. Decomposed granite and gravel are honest, inexpensive surfaces for informal paths, and they will need topping up every few years, which is a fair trade if you know it going in.
Permits, city by city
None of this is exotic, but none of it is optional either, and the thresholds are genuinely different across a few miles.
Chamblee pre-screens driveway replacement and enlargement for land disturbance before it will issue anything, so a straight swap still starts with the city. Peachtree Corners requires a Land Development Permit once a project disturbs more than five thousand square feet, and any project under that permit has to hold the first inch of rainfall on the property, which pushes a lot of driveway work toward permeable systems. Dunwoody issues land disturbance permits for driveway and grading work and requires an erosion control bond, which belongs in the estimate rather than turning up in week three. Sandy Springs runs set work hours for commercial landscaping crews and will not have us starting before half seven. Doraville reviews on a ten business day clock with a notarised owner affidavit, so a permitted job there needs two extra weeks on the calendar.
We pull what needs pulling and we tell you which approvals are ours and which are yours. If a neighbourhood architectural committee is involved, that is usually the longest lead time on the whole job and the one we cannot file for you.
What this work sounds like from next door
Oak Avenue runs battery equipment charged off a solar trailer, and on maintenance visits that means a crew your neighbours genuinely do not hear. We are not going to pretend a driveway replacement is the same.
Breaking out old concrete is loud. So is a masonry saw, and so is a plate compactor, and that is true of every one of them whatever powers it. What does disappear is the constant background of it: no gas engine idling through lunch, no generator running all afternoon to feed the tools, no two stroke exhaust drifting into the house next door with the windows open. The trimming, the blowing, the cutting and the clean up are all battery, which is most of the hours on most days.
What we do instead of overselling it is tell you which days are the loud ones, usually demolition and cutting, and stack that work into the middle of the day rather than spreading it across the week. If your neighbour works nights or your youngest naps at one, say so at the site visit and we will build the schedule around it.
The other half of the sustainability argument on this kind of job is quieter than the equipment. Old concrete and old base stone do not have to go to a landfill and be replaced with virgin aggregate trucked in from a quarry. Crushed and reused on site as base, or hauled to a recycler, it takes a real bite out of both the disposal and the delivery. Permeable surfaces keep rain on the property instead of sending it to a creek that is already carrying more than it should.
Questions we get asked
Do I need a permit to replace my driveway? Usually yes in some form, and it varies by city. Chamblee runs a land disturbance pre-screen on driveway replacement and enlargement. Dunwoody issues a land disturbance permit for driveway work and requires an erosion control bond. Peachtree Corners triggers a Land Development Permit once you disturb more than five thousand square feet. Work in the apron at the street is often a separate right of way approval on top of that. We confirm with the city before the first shovel rather than after.
Why do you dig so much deeper for a driveway than for a patio? Because a car concentrates its weight onto four small contact patches, and a person does not. A walkway or patio is usually four to six inches of compacted aggregate. A driveway is roughly double, and more where the subgrade is soft or a delivery truck will turn. A driveway built on a patio base looks identical on the day it is finished and starts moving within a few years.
Can you widen my driveway without harming the tree beside it? Sometimes, and it depends entirely on which side and how far. Feeder roots sit in the top foot of soil and spread out past the branch tips, so widening usually means trenching along one edge of the root plate. We look at the tree before we draw the layout, and the answer might be widening the other way, a parking pad set off the drive, or two paved ribbons with planting between them. If a tree and the drive you want cannot both exist, we say so at the site visit.
Are pavers or poured concrete better here? Concrete is less expensive to install over a large area and it is perfectly good, as long as you accept that it will crack and that control joints only decide where. Pavers cost more at the start and handle ground movement better, because the surface is flexible and any settled area can be lifted, re-based and relaid with the same stone. On clay that holds water, that repairability is worth a lot over twenty years.
What are permeable pavers, and are they worth it? They sit on an open graded stone base with no fine material in it, so rain drains through the joints and into the base rather than running off. They are worth it in three situations: where a city limits how much of your lot can be hard surface, where the water coming off a new surface would make an existing wet spot worse, and where a project has to retain rainfall on site to get its permit. They cost more and they need the joints kept clean.
How long does a walkway or a set of front steps take? A front walk and steps is commonly a few days on site once the materials are here, and demolition of what was there is often the slowest part. Driveways run longer, and the schedule is usually set by access, curing time on any concrete, and how quickly a permit clears rather than by the laying itself. We give you the sequence in writing before we start so you know which days you cannot park in your own driveway.
Will new steps match the brick or stone on my house? Rarely an exact match, and we would rather say that at the start than surprise you at the end. Brick from the 1960s is not made any more, and a modern equivalent laid beside forty year old masonry reads as new. What works better is choosing something that clearly relates to the house without pretending to be original, and putting the match where it matters most, usually the riser faces you look straight at from the street.
Do you use gas equipment on this kind of job? Not for the day to day. Trimming, blowing, cutting and clean up are all battery, charged off the solar trailer. Breaking out old concrete and heavy excavation still needs a machine, and we are straight about that rather than claiming a silent job site. What you do not get is a gas engine idling all day or a generator running to feed the tools, and we tell you in advance which days will be loud.
Where we work
Steps, walks and drives are the jobs that get compared across a street, so we do a lot of them in clusters. Most of ours are in Dunwoody, where the hard surface limit on a street facing yard shapes half the driveway conversations we have, and in Sandy Springs, where steep front yards on the Glenridge and North Springs side mean a front approach is usually a set of steps rather than a walk. In Brookhaven the tree ordinance decides the order of work more often than the layout does. Chamblee and Doraville are full of 1950s and 1960s ranches with original single width drives that no longer fit two cars, and Peachtree Corners adds a neighbourhood architectural review to the city one on most streets.
If the project is bigger than a surface, it usually touches one of these too: paver patios, retaining walls where a step down needs holding back, or a full back yard plan once the hard surfaces are settled.
Book a free site visit
We will walk the property with you, look at where water goes as well as where the concrete is broken, measure what needs measuring and tell you what the city will want. Then you get a written scope and a number, and no obligation attached to either. If the honest answer is that you have a drainage problem rather than a driveway problem, we will tell you that instead of selling you a driveway.
Call us on (404) 369-0989 or book a site visit here. If you would like to hear from people who have had us in their yard first, our reviews are here.