Pebble Tec

Hooray!  We've had quite a bit of progress on the pool front this week. 

On Monday they came and cleaned our yard - they filled in the trenches, leveled everything out, hauled away a bunch of trash, and overall just cleaned up.  There are still piles of scraps, etc, but it's from the patio contractors, so I'm guessing it will still be there for awhile.

On Tuesday they came and pumped the nasty slimey rain water out of the pool and spa, and did some other prep work for the interior finish to be installed. 

They also put our gate & fence back up, which means after 6 weeks, our puppies are finally going to be able to come home!  I'm sure Jack & Connie are breathing a huge sigh of relief, but I have a feeling Miss Reese is going to miss those young, active schnauzers!  We plan to get them either tomorrow evening or Friday evening.

Today they came and put the interior finish on the pool & spa, called Pebble Tec. 

They started by killing 4 snakes

Then got to work!

Our pool contractor is Iguana Pools.  They said we could have a free tile iguana for our pool if we wanted one.  Jimmy & I didn't really care, the kids wanted one, so we have a small green tile iguana in the shallow end of the pool.

Special boots worn for installing pebble tec so  we don't end up with footprints in our pool

The finished product

Tomorrow they will come and acid wash the inerior of the pool & then begin filling it!  It takes 24 hours to fill - they do it with our garden hose.  Once the pool is full, the will come and turn on our pumps which have to run continuously for 3 days.  After 3 days they will come and program the pumps.  This system has to run for 7 days, then they will turn on our heater so we can heat the spa, and the pool if we choose.  We are planning to heat the pool if we have a weekend of good weather between now & when it actually warms up enough to use it without the heater.  I'm sure the kids won't wait that long - they are already talking about breaking it in this weekend.  I will watch from the side & take lots of pictures.  I'm sure they will only last minutes in that cold water!

Hopefully more patio progress will happen next week.  They did shingle the small covered area outside our bedroom on Tuesday, but other than that there hasn't really been much going on, other than a zillion conversations back and forth between Jimmy & the contractor about how to design the stupid fireplace.  Hopefully a decision will be reached soon!

More pictures & updates soon....

Flagston Inlays, Covered Area for Doors, & Scheduling!!

Wow! Progress today - and as an added bonus, the completion of the pool has actually been scheduled! The puppies can come home soon!

I'll jump into pictures first with the scheduling at the bottom of the post, just to shake things up a bit.  I'm wild and crazy that way.

Today the flagstoners came and laid the pieces of flagstone that works to break up the pea gravel decking a bit, just to give it a bit of interest.  I took pictures of all three inalys, but blogger was not enjoying me uploading that many pictures of it apparently, so you just get to see one here.

The construction guys came and framed out the area that will cover our future French Doors.  Rumor has it the doors will be in tomorrow, so I'm hoping that means they'll be installed by Friday?  Probably wishful thinking.

Jimmy spoke with the pool contractors today.  They have scheduled the clean up crew for Monday - they will come and fill in all the ruts, fix the sod, put the fence back up, etc.

On Tuesday we are scheduled to have the interior of the pool cleaned & acid washed so we can be ready for the Pebble Tec to be installed on Wednesday!  There are many different choices of pebble tec, and after lots of back and forths, we have chosed Caribbean Blue.  We're told that with our yard having so much natural light, it's in our best interest to go with a lighter color interior finish, otherwise it will feel like we are swimming in bathwater by end of July, beginning of August.  The lighter color finishes take a little longer to heat up in the spring, but stay cooler longer in the hot summer.  We decided cooler longer in the summer is more important that warmer in the spring.  The pool has a heater, so we can always heat it early if we think we need to take a swim sooner!  Below is a swatch from the Pebble Tec website.  The top picture shows what the interior finish will look like without water, and just below what it looks like with water

And here is another example of an actual pool with Caribbean Blue Pebble Tec.  Too bad our view won't change to be a golf course, but that wasn't part of the package.

After the Pebble Tec is installed on Wednesday, they will begin filling the pool on Thursday!  They fill it with our garden hose, so I'm certain that will not be a quick process.  Once the pool is completely filled they will come out and turn on our pumps!  We'll be good to go by next weekend.

Now that I have put all this in writing, I'm sure it will begin raining Noah's Ark amounts of rain, and none of the schedule will work out, but for now, this is the plan.  Everyone get your bathing suits & towels ready - we should be swimming soon!  We just need for near 80 degree days like we had today!

Hurry Up and Wait

Finally - beautiful, cloudless sky weather...one would expect tremendous progress on the pool front. Not so much. Turns out when there's rainy weather, all the contractors get backed up. When the contractors are backed up, it means you have to practice enormous amounts of patience, and trust that eventually the project will be completed. Ugh. Patience is not my thing.

Drew decided we needed a distraction from the wait & rain and threw a pig from his angry birds game at the plasma TV.  So we got to shop for a new TV this weekend.

Broken TV

Culprit

Today they delivered the flagstone for the inlays in the decking.  They are supposed to be installed tomorrow.

The covered patio now has shingles

I believe they ar supposed to do the covered area for our doors tomorrow, but that was supposed to be finished Monday, so I'm not holding my breath.  Will update more if and when things ever progress.  I'm guessing about the time they get ready to make progress here, the rain will start again.

Patio Cont'd

They put the roof on the patio today.  I'm sure they did other things, but I'm not sure what.  Here are some pictures:

Patio Construction!

They were supposed to start the patio construction on Monday, but it rained ALL DAY LONG, so they started on Tuesday instead.  The came for about 3 hours today before the rain started in full force, so a little more progress was made today.

Tomorrow there are only very small chances of rain, so hopefully they'll be able to make quite a bit of progress.  I know it's supposed to be very rainy again Friday & Saturday, so I have little hope any more progress will be made until next week.  We shall see.

As far as the pool goes - they are supposed to send the clean up crew this week to fill in ruts, haul off trash, clean out the pool, put the fence back up, etc.  As soon as the construction people are finished cutting wood for the patio we can have the interior of the pool finished & then fill it with water - so the pool part is rapidly coming to a close.  If we could just get the rain to hold off a bit we'd be in good shape!  Hate to complain about the rain, because we really needed it, but I REALLY want to get this project behind us so we can enjoy our dogs again, as well as the pool & patio!

Here are some pictures:

Drew got to bring home the class mascot, the Otter, on Monday.  He and Otter made some words on the refrigerator together

Tuesday they started demo on the roof for the patio section.  They decided to hold off on the French Door conversion for this week since the weather didn't look too cooperative.  They didn't want to have more roof ripped off than they could handle with rainy weather.

Mom decided to take paparazzi style pictures of the half naked construction workers.

At the end of day one of patio construction

My sweet little Valentine

The boys with the Batman Castle & a lot of the Thomas engines

Patio at the end of the day today

Playing in the mud

Patio Materials Delivered

Not a lot of progress since the decking was poured on Wednesday. The construction people delivered the framing & roofing materials for the covered patio. They are supposed to begin demolition on Monday, but we are supposed to have a lots of rain next week, so I don't know how much progress will be made.

Decking & a fixed driveway

Last night they called and asked us to decide where we would like our flagstone in-lays within our decking. Jimmy & I went out and spray painted lines for where we would like the flagstone to be. This morning when the workers arrived I got yelled out by the guy in the blue shirt & hat because everytime they come there are more changes....we've altered ONE thing in this entire process, and the flagstone is something the construction supervisor told us to do. Oh well - they did as they were told

The bobcat broke our driveway, so it got fixed today as well

gravel for the decking

Pouring concrete

Pea gravel decking - this is the kind that is the least slippery, so that's why we chose it

The missing section is where one of the flagstone in-lays will be

Pictures are more fun with running children in them.

Striking a pose by the spa

More flagstone inlays