The Progression of the Pool

The pool people moved so fast I didn't get a chance to take a "before"picture. Earlier I posted a picture of the chopped up deck (included again, here). Trust me...there were cracks between the deck and the pool that you could have put your hand through.

Also, the pool had never been replastered and there were some bare spots that went all the way to the concrete under the plaster. We decided to put in an "exposed aggregate" instead of plaster. Which means you can see little flecks of stone (or something) in the white mixture that is put on the inside of the pool (and it's supposed to last longer).

PICTURE DOCUMENTARY:

In the beginning:
Getting rid of diving board, messed up deck and ugly tile. They created new deck in only the chopped up area. They later drained the pool and added a coat of color and cool deck to the entire deck surface.

Below shows the draining of the pool water into the back of the yard. Ugly tile has already been chipped off here and new tile added. There is a board under the new tile giving it a surface to rest on while it dries. The board was later removed. Note the stained plaster in the pool that will be removed later.
More work on adding new tile and chipping out bad spots of old plaster. Notice the seeping of ground water into the bottom of the pool and the faded, ugly whitish plaster. You can also see the stained and faded area of the old part of the deck in the foreground.

This shot shows how ugly the ground water looked as it seeped in. YUCK!
There is a protective paper layer over the new tile so that the paint from the first layer of cool deck paint didn't mess up the tiles and grout.This is a picture of the makeshift drain helping to keep the ground water from filling in the deep end of the pool. The drain was on a pump that ran 24/7 for approx. two weeks while they smoothed a dark gray finish over the old plaster and let it cure. It, however, developed a spot that didn't adhere to the bottom (around the drains) that had to be re-chipped, re-covered and re-cured.

After the gray stuff cured, the "Exposed Aggregate" crew came. They mixed up GI-NORMOUS amounts of the pretty white stuff and poured it, one wheel barrow at a time into the pool and troweled it by hand. The reason they couldn't just pour it in the pool from the mixer is because the rocket scientist who designed the back yard's pretty, masonry fence didn't leave a drive through entry.

Below is a picture of the truckload of aggregate bags (many had already been mixed and poured by the time I thought to take this picture). The wheel barrow is being loaded too.


A wheel barrow of "the mix" being slopped in with a 10 gallon bucket.

I should mention that this work started around 9:00 am on Good Friday.
The white blob at the bottom of the pool in this picture is the first bucket or two of slop.
A picture of the "platform" shoes that were worn in the pool by the crew while they spread and troweled the pool mixture on. Kind of cool, huh? Some of the gentlemen even ducted taped them on after the shoe part was put on.
Team work in the deep end.

This should give a good feeling for how hard it was to stand and get traction to run the trowel full of sticky white goo up the side of the pool. It was kind of fun to watch them slipping and sliding all around.More team work. This was around lunch time. They were doing the finishing touches, still wearing their platform shoes.

We left for approximately 45 minutes. This is what got started before we returned...water going in the pool.

Around 1 hour later:
Sometime Friday evening as we were going to bed (around 11 ish):
Saturday: I can't really remember what time, definitely in the morning - maybe 9:00. This part of the pool took forever. Notice the water isn't over the bottom step yet.

Around lunch time on Saturday. Bottom step is only barely covered.

Saturday, early evening. One step under, step number two not quite there yet.

Sometime in the wee hours of Saturday night, early Sunday morning (around 3:00ish) I took the following picture. Blind. Not knowing what the water level was. And not being able to see the pool. All night long I would take pictures with the flash and then check the review to see if we needed to go downstairs and turn off the water. This process truly had us up and down all night in anticipation.

Did I mention that the water was coming from our faucet. And we have great water pressure here, but did you know that you can't fill a pool, have children take showers, flush a toilet and run the dishwasher all at the same time. There just isn't enough water in the line for that!

Oh yeah, here's the picture:

Easter morning!! 7:30 am. Pool is officially full. Approximately 42 hours after it started.