Poor Paul’s Paving & Sealcoating

We hired Poor Paul’s to repair our 600-​ft road base driveway after it washed out in the recent heavy rains. When the road was originally built, there wasn’t much attention given to managing storm water — the water ran down the driveway from the county road at the top of the hill, and the swollen creek came over the driveway because there was only one culvert, and washed big ruts into the driveway and carried the road base into the creek bed. It was a mess!
James from Poor Paul’s came right over the same afternoon we called, and was very enthusiastic about how they could add ditches to redirect the water away from the road and add more culverts, as well as packing down the road base so it would last. He claimed they could do the job in one day, and gave us a discount on his initial estimate to jump into a gap in their schedule immediately, which was great for us, since until the road could be repaired we would be walking the 600 ft from the county road to the house! We had only gotten one other bid and were planning to get a third, but James’ bid was lower then the other one, and we were impressed with his proposal and eager to get the job done, so we said yes, let’s do it!
Poor Paul’s is a family-​owned business, and the whole family showed up the next day to do the job — including several brothers and cousins — with a bobcat, paver, and roller. The brother on the bobcat (Brian) turned out to be an obsessive artist with the tractor, spending all day sculpting the land around the road to direct the water, and laying the culverts. It was convenient that it had just rained (again) the night before, so he could watch the runoff follow his new ditches down the hill and get everything just right. Brian was nothing short of amazing. He did a fantastic job on the water management features — going well beyond what James had promised — and even promptly moved one of the culverts when we pointed out that it was laid too high and wouldn’t catch the water properly. Then he sprinted back and forth in the bobcat spreading road base, trying to get the job done, while another brother packed it down with the roller.
They ended up spending most of the next day finishing the job, and then ran out of road base near the end, because they had used more than they expected around the culverts. The end of the driveway near the house got shortchanged, so before we paid them the balance, we asked them to come back with one final load of road base to get that part done to specifications. They did it right away, packing all of the road base down carefully with the roller, although the road base was a little dry, so we weren’t entirely convinced that it would be solid. Overall, though, they had clearly worked very hard to do an excellent job for us.
We couldn’t afford to pave the whole length, but we did have them lay asphalt on the section over the culverts. They did a good job on that, too, though again not quite as quickly as James’ initial boast of getting it all done in one day!
We waited until after the first rain to write this review, so we could see how the water management features performed and whether the road was hardened enough to withstand the storm water. It was so satisfying to see the water run down the ditches to either side of our new road, and the creek run through the new culverts, rather than washing the road base away! The road is still a little soft (maybe it did need a bit more moisture or more packing with the roller to be really solid), and you can see where we drove over it on the first rainy day, but it survived, and the fact that Brian did such an outstanding job digging the ditches and building berms makes us hopeful that this new road will outlast the old one by many years, even if the creek rises to the level it did in the recent «flash flood.»
We would recommend Poor Paul’s especially for building roads where there is a need for tractor work to redirect water away from the road on a slope or crossing a wet-​weather creek. They did a great job on all aspects of the work they did for us – they were knowledgeable, friendly, prompt, skillful, experienced, used professional equipment, did a better job than they specified (especially on the tractor work), corrected problems immediately, and finished quickly, even when the job turned out to take longer and use more materials than they had originally estimated. We hope to hire them soon to pave the rest of the length of the driveway!