A driveway is the largest piece of flatwork on most properties, and it carries more weight and more traffic than any sidewalk on the lot. We are a concrete contractor working in Marietta, Georgia, and we cover Smyrna, Kennesaw, Roswell and the rest of metro Atlanta on the same terms. Housing here runs a wide range of ages, so some of what we pour replaces slabs that have been down for decades. Others are first pours on ground that has never held concrete. Both are ordinary work for us.
Everything starts with what is already there. Old concrete comes out, the base gets graded and compacted, and steel goes in as rebar or wire mesh depending on the slab and what will park on it. Then we pour, finish, and leave it alone to cure. Some driveways sit on commuter corridors running toward Atlanta, where a truck cannot sit across the road all day, so access gets sorted before anyone mixes anything. The pour itself is the short part.
Most driveway failures trace back to the base, not the concrete. A slab poured thin, or poured over ground that was never properly compacted, cracks and settles no matter how clean the finish looked the first year. Roots lift panels. Water running the wrong way finds the garage door. Patching over any of that buys a season or two, and then the same work comes back around, which is why we would rather deal with what is under the slab than resurface a problem.
Finish is a real choice, not an add-on we push. A plain broom finish holds up well and looks right on plenty of houses, while stamped concrete, colored concrete and exposed aggregate each change how the driveway reads from the street and how it sits against the house. If a sidewalk or apron ties into the driveway, we handle it in the same pour instead of leaving a cold seam that separates later. Call for a free estimate. A driveway is easier to look at in person than to describe over the phone, and most of what matters is visible standing on it.
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A new driveway starts with excavation and a compacted base, then forms set to the finished grade so water runs off the slab instead of standing on it. We place four inches of concrete for cars, thicker where trucks turn or park. Rebar or wire mesh goes in before the pour, and control joints get cut early so the slab cracks where we put the joints rather than across the middle.
Replacement means the old slab comes out, not a thin overlay poured on top of failing concrete. We break it up, haul it off, and look at what is underneath, because a driveway that heaved or settled usually did it for a reason in the base. Then we regrade, recompact, reset the forms, and pour. Tie-ins at the garage and at the sidewalk get attention, since that is where most replacements look wrong.
Repair makes sense when the slab is sound and the problem is local: a settled panel, a spalled surface, a cracked apron, an edge broken off by a delivery truck. We saw-cut and replace individual panels, patch spalling, and reseal joints. What we will not do is patch a driveway that has failed across the whole slab, because the new work separates from the old and you pay twice.
Paving covers the finish, and concrete gives you options past a broom finish. Stamped concrete takes a pattern in the wet slab, colored concrete carries the tone through the mix, and exposed aggregate washes back the surface to show the stone. Stamped work asks for a sealer on a schedule to hold color. We match a new driveway to an existing concrete sidewalk or walk when the two meet, so the flatwork reads as one piece.
We walk the existing driveway with you and look at what is actually there: slab thickness at the broken edges, how the old base held up, where water sheets off and where it sits. Cracking patterns tell us a lot. Settlement near the apron means one thing, surface crazing means another. We check the slope from garage to street, note utility lines and meter boxes, and measure the drive so the concrete installation is sized off real numbers.
You get the scope in writing: square footage, slab thickness, reinforcement (rebar or wire mesh), finish, jointing plan and how we handle the apron. Nothing gets poured off a handshake. Work in the right-of-way or a new curb cut goes through the City of Marietta, and we pull that permit and schedule the inspection rather than leaving it on you. If the drawing changes, the written scope changes with it.
Old concrete comes out in sections, gets loaded, and gets hauled off, not stacked on your lawn. Then the real work starts. We cut the subgrade to grade, remove soft or organic material, and compact in lifts with a plate compactor or roller. Graded aggregate base goes down and gets compacted again. A concrete driveway fails from underneath far more often than from above, so we do not rush this part.
Forms get set to the finished grade and staked so they hold under the weight of wet concrete. We keep positive fall away from the garage slab. Steel sits on chairs in the middle third of the slab, not dropped on the base and pulled up later. On pour day we place, screed, and bull float in a working sequence so nothing sets ahead of us, and we keep enough hands on site to finish continuously.
Finish depends on what you picked: broom for traction, stamped and colored for pattern, or exposed aggregate. Control joints get cut on a schedule tied to the slab layout so cracks land where we put them. Curing compound goes on, and we tell you when to walk it and when to drive it. Then we walk the driveway together, check the apron and any adjoining sidewalks, and confirm drainage runs the way it should. Driveways and sidewalks both live or die on that last detail.
Two driveways of the same size can land far apart on cost, and the reasons are usually visible from the street. What sits under the old slab matters. So does how close a mixer truck can get to the pour. Walk your driveway before you call anyone, because most of what moves a concrete number is something you can see or stand on.
| What changes the price | Which way | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Old concrete already in place | costs more | It has to be broken out, loaded and hauled off before any new flatwork starts. |
| Gravel or dirt drive with nothing to remove | costs less | Grading starts the first day, with no demolition or disposal ahead of the pour. |
| Mixer truck can back up to the forms | costs less | Concrete runs straight down the chute instead of moving by buggy or pump. |
| Narrow side lot, a gate, or a fence in the way | costs more | Every yard gets carried in, which adds labor and shortens the working time. |
| Thickness for work trucks, an RV, or a turnaround | costs more | More yardage, and usually rebar on chairs rather than wire mesh alone. |
| Soft, wet or filled subgrade | costs more | Bad ground gets cut out and replaced with compacted stone before anyone forms it. |
| Slope that runs downhill toward the garage | costs more | Water control means a drain, a curb, or reworking the grade of the slab. |
| Stamped, colored or exposed aggregate finish | costs more | Release agents, sealers and extra hands on the finish add work after placement. |
Compare bids line by line instead of by the bottom figure. Look for slab thickness, whether the reinforcement is rebar or wire mesh, the depth of the stone base, where the control joints fall, and who is removing the old driveway. A bid that leaves those blank is not cheaper. It is only less specific.
Concrete keeps gaining strength well after the finishers leave, and the early days matter most. We tell you when the slab will carry a car, and we keep it blocked off until then. Foot traffic comes first. Vehicles wait longer. Heavy trucks wait longer still. Parking on green concrete leaves tire marks and can crack a slab that would otherwise have lasted decades.
Yes. A new pour laid over a failing driveway inherits every problem underneath it. We break out the old concrete, haul it off, then read what the removal exposes: soft spots, old fill, tree roots, a subgrade that never got compacted. That gets corrected before any forms go in. Overlays have their place on a sound slab, but they are not a replacement.
Thickness follows the load. A driveway carrying two cars and the occasional delivery van is built lighter than one where a work truck or an RV sits in the same spot every night. We also thicken the edges, since that is where slabs break first. Tell us what actually parks there, including anything seasonal, and we size the slab and its reinforcement to match.
Yes. We saw cut a clean line at the apron, break the old concrete back to that cut, and leave the apron and garage slab undisturbed. Where the apron itself has dropped or cracked through, replacing it along with the driveway makes more sense than tying fresh concrete into a bad edge. That joint is worth looking at closely before demolition.
All concrete cracks somewhere. The work is deciding where. Concrete shrinks as it cures, and a slab with nowhere to release that stress releases it in a random line across the middle. Control joints give it a straight place to go instead. Compacted subgrade, rebar or wire mesh, and joints cut at the right spacing and depth turn cracking into something you stop noticing.
Yes, on most driveways. Rebar and wire mesh do not keep a slab from cracking; they hold the pieces in plane, so a crack stays a hairline instead of becoming two slabs sitting at different heights. On a driveway that empties onto a commuter route toward Atlanta and gets used hard twice a day, that difference shows up early.