Diggin' the Pond and Building the Driveway

Did I mention that Sandy and I live in New Orleans while we are building our dream home in Sevierville? This process could have been very stressful but the Sparks family has made us feel like family.

While Sandy and I were deciding on a design for our log cabin, we decided to move forward with building the driveway and digging the pond. We had been working with Sparks Construction for some time on the building plans that we decided to contract Bo to supervise the pond and driveway construction.

Know Your Strengths

Sandy has always been decisive. So when Bo announced that he wanted to place the house on a flat knoll on the property, Sandy would have nothing of it. She was insistent that the house be built on the hillside to capture the best mountain views from the property. Bo asked if Sandy knew what it was going to cost to run utilities up there but she really didn’t care. That was my problem. Bo even offered to build her a gazebo on the hill and buy her a cart to take her there to enjoy the views. Sandy was still insistent that the house be built on the hill. The hill is 452 feet from the street which created many challenges. However, the plans for the driveway began to take shape.

Retirement Plans

I always wanted a fishing pond on my retirement property, so it made sense to use the dirt from the pond to build the driveway. The drive needed to be 30’ wide, 15’ tall, 15’ across at the top and 452’ long. The noise from the heavy equipment echoing off of English mountain made neighbors come from miles away to see what all of the racket was.

Bo arranged for all of the permits and Todd ran the excavation crew. About a month later we had a levee (dam) for a driveway and a pond for fishing. All we needed was God to give us a lot of snow and rain to fill the pond. About a year later we have a 1.5-acre pond that is eight feet deep at its deepest end. In the fall we will stock it with panfish. In the spring we will stock the bass.