Putting in the Pool

We had our backyard landscaped in October of 2012. We only did 1/2 of the yard, knowing that we wanted to put in a pool, but we needed to figure out the financing at the time. Well, a year and a half later we are ready. We tried to refinance the house to pay for it, but it didn't quite pan out the way we wanted. We didn't want to take out a loan from the bank to pay for it, so we are now in a position to pay for the pool with cash outright! Dave Ramsey would be proud :)

We decided to build our pool with the same company that did our landscaping, especially since they already did the electrical drop BEFORE putting in the astroturf in our backyard to prevent digging anything up to lay it later:

We went and met with the company last week to finalize the design, some details, and sign all the paperwork. They had a really cool program that Sabrina (our designer) input all these pictures and measurements from our house to make a 3D mock up of the yard and pool. Going into to see the mock up design was cool because it reminded me of Property Brothers on HGTV where they show the people their choices on the 3D screen. It was really neat.

I had told her previously (at some meetings at our house for measurements) that I wanted some kind of tile design in the pool and she put in an octopus, which we are NOT doing. We picked 3 small turtles (one for each of the girls) that I'll show you in a bit. So picture it without the giant purple octopus in the deep end.

ps. That's supposed to be Avery sitting on the wet deck

The pool is 9 feet across and 26 feet long. The wet deck is 4 feet long so that we can put a beach chair in there, use it as a "baby pool" area, or whatever. We also asked them to put an umbrella sleeve in the wet deck so that it can be covered if there are babies in there or we are relaxing in some chairs.

You can see on the right, our 2 air conditioning units. The pool pump is going to go next to them and they are going to put a fence around the units so they are all blocked off together from the pool deck.

Here is what the pool looks like at night. There is the pool light in the deep end, which will be 5 feet. The way the pool is designed, we can advertise it as a "lap pool" as well because it is long and the left side of it isn't interrupted by any stairs or returns or anything.

We left the pool company after signing our contract and went to the tile place. The guy there was AWESOME. There was tons of border tile to pick from and instead of just letting us pick something pretty, he gave us tons of advice about what cleans the best, what looks the nicest, which tiles cheap hotels use (to avoid), which collects calcium or shows it the most and tons of other stuff. We also picked the color of our pool decking and some decorative tiles for in the pool (the little turtles).

Here is what the little turtles looks like in real tiles:

But we picked these colors:

We also decided to have a decorative tile to make the edges of the stairs and the wet deck in the shallow end, and the bench in the deep end. It looks like bubbles and the tiles are a royal blue. You can see where they would go if you scroll back up and look where the diamond tiles are on the edges of those spots in the pool.

We chose a light gray color pool decking because it's the same color as the window and door framing on our house. The plaster in the pool is going to be mixed to be a light blue so that the water looks more like the ocean than clear (which is white plaster) and we picked a border tile that is a similar color and texture to the bubble tiles that are going on the steps. I didn't get a picture of those because we changed our minds to that at the last minute. Here is a pic of the pool decking color next to our 2nd choice tile:

The misty gray color is the decking color. And just ignore the tile...we went with a darker one.

For now, we are waiting for all the approvals from our HOA and we have to go get our neighbors to sign off on our blue prints because of the construction. We live on the corner lot and they are taking down a wall of our brick fence to bring in the back hoe to dig and the cement truck to pour. Once we get everything passed through our HOA (which our contractor handles) and they get all the permits we need, we will be a go for the pool building. We are hoping it will start the first week in March. They said it takes about 6-8 weeks to complete construction, so we are pretty pumped to get the pool in for the summer. Especially since the YMCA pool is so crazy in the summer with the camps and it's ONLY open from 12-5 everyday.

Avery loves the water, so we are pretty excited to get this all rolling. We already have that side of the yard completely fenced off with a self closing gate and it's state law to put an alarm on every door and window that exits into the backyard from the first floor, so it should be very safe.

We'll keep you updated with pictures and stuff as we start digging!