Curved Concrete Driveway — Dearborn Heights, MI

About this project

A 2,100 square foot driveway replacement in Dearborn Heights, poured over two days on a 4,000 PSI mix. Broom finish, which is still the right answer for a driveway this size — durable, slip-resistant under Michigan winters, and it does not compete with the landscaping.

The work here is in the edges. A straight-run driveway is mostly a question of good base and clean finishing. This one carries a radius along one side and a flared approach out to the street, and curves like that are formed by hand before a single yard of concrete arrives. Get the forming wrong and no amount of finishing saves it — the eye picks up an uneven curve immediately, especially against a straight paver walk running alongside it.

Running the perimeter is a 12-inch trowel-finished border. The field of the driveway is broomed for grip; the border is worked smooth with a trowel, so you get a clean band framing the whole slab and following the curve. It is a small detail that does two things at once — it reads as a deliberate edge rather than where the concrete happened to stop, and the smoother surface sheds water and debris off the edge instead of holding it against the grass line.

It was poured with Impede IntraSeal, an integral water repellent mixed into the concrete rather than a sealer rolled onto the surface afterward. On a driveway that will take road salt off vehicle tires every winter, protection that lives inside the slab is worth more than a coating that needs renewing every few years.

Control joints were saw cut after the slab set, placed to control where the concrete cracks rather than leaving it to chance. See more concrete work in Dearborn Heights or read about what a driveway costs in Michigan.