Thursday, April 12, 2012

A project to share - The Pool!!!

We started on our pool about 2 1/2 weeks ago!  Even after much agonizing, sketching, perusing of pictures on the web and looking at neighbor's pools, it was difficult trying to decide the exact design.  The pool builder called one Friday and said the digger could come out on Tuesday of the following week so I pulled out my grid paper and some printouts of pools I liked and sketched out a design.  We sprayed it out on the ground and I stared at it for a few days.  I find that I do a lot of staring.  I look at blank space and imagine what the finished product will look like.   I did this all throughout the building process and am still doing it with the pool.  Do you do this? My kids know exactly what I'm doing so they think I am normal but I'm sure the neighbors think I'm nuts!


Here is the before of the yard.  As you can see, there is some asymmetry happening with the windows on the porch and the wall longer on one side than the other.  Those windows are a whole other post but they have caused me much angst over the last 2 years!  I love my vantage point from the inside of the house with corner fireplace and centered tv but it didn't translate very well on the exterior elevation and I didn't really notice it until we had been in the house a few months. (Even after all of that staring...) The wall was an afterthought that we put in at the end of the building process to keep from having a large slope to the yard.  We centered it with the back porch which only magnifies the off-centeredness of the windows.  All of this is to say that I really struggled with where to place the pool exactly based on all of these factors...


The diggers laid the pool out again, moving it back about 3 feet and adding a foot around it.  I was really struggling with whether or not to center it up with the steps or the house.  Telling them to start digging was probably the hardest thing I have had to do yet!  I have never been so nervous about something! 

I took the boys out of school early so they could witness the giant excavator in their yard.  There's R watching the digger work.
And here is T checking out the finished product.  Dig complete and framed up!  I was much more relaxed after all was said and done.  I like how the curve lines up with the steps when you are standing on the back porch. 
About 10 days later the crew came out and put in the steel, plumbing and set the equipment.
Then the gunite was sprayed in!  This was another nervewracking moment for me.  I was relaxed about everything when it was just sitting there in dirt but to have it set in stone was another terrifying experience.

More to come...