How to Reseal Your Asphalt: In 129 Easy Missteps.

1. Get a really good book to read.

2.  Wait for a day when the weather-guesser on TV estimates that the soles of your feet will peel if you walk bare-foot on the sidewalk. If you can fry an egg on cement, it’s too hot, but I have a work-around. Simply spray water on the asphalt to cool it off. Hose yourself off while you’re at it. This may be the last time you’ll see yourself this clean for weeks to come.

3. Walk the length and width of your drive.  Multiply this by the length of your stride. This is the square footage you’ll cover.

4. Throw the above figure out. It has nothing to do with the coverage listed on the side of the asphalt bucket.  It was computed by the same people who guess the weather for a living.

5. Saunter into a home supply store to pick up buckets of asphalt goo. If you’re female, wander around the store until you find a strapping hulk ( preferably an employee) and ask them to pile these hernia-inducing buckets on a cart for you.  If you’re male…I suggest forgetting your ego, and asking someone to do the heavy-lifting.  You’ll get your chance to prove your muscle strength when you get home.

6. Return to store to buy a big-honking squeegee about 2 feet wide.

7. Sweep and hose down the drive.  Allow to dry completely. And because it’s hotter than a pot of stew on the backburner of a $4 stove, you can use this as an excuse to wait until tomorrow, even though it’ll be dry in an hour.

8. Fill the cracks.
And….Isn’t this what life’s about. Constantly filling cracks?  They should dry for 24 hours, but who wants another day of  looking forward to smearing asphalt around?  Goop as much filler as you can squeeze into the breaks and get out your squeegee.

9. Two people make this a fast, fun chore. One to pour the glop out of the bucket. One to push it around the drive. Scout wanted to do the squeegeeing in order to splash most of it on me.

10.  At the half-way point, return to the store again and get more goop.

11. While you are gone, your assistant will experiment to determine if the goop will burn.

12. Return from store, relieved that the driveway is not aflame.

13. Once completed,  line the end of drive with the buckets to keep the UPS man from sprinting across it because he has to make it to the door within 90 seconds of parking on the street.  **%#!!

14. You’ll also have a lot neighbor/stranger time. Most of your neighbors will stop to make comments.  Just agree with all of them. Including the jokes about how much tar is on your clothes and in your hair.

15. Clean up with—

What the heck???  There’s no instructions on the buckets. No hint of which toxic chemicals will eat away skin and tar in order to shed the blobs of goop freckling legs and arms?  Not to fear. Use the Sanitation Super Heroes: gasoline, Lava Pumice Soap, and Duct Tape.

16. Let cure 24 hours. Oops!  Remove cars from garage and park in street.  That should’ve been Step 1.  Oh well, you can’t get out now, but no one will come in either.  Twenty-four hours of isolated bliss.

See. I told you, you were going to need a good book to read.

Advertisements