Saturday and Sunday

Jay put more shrubs out around the spa and up the hill to the waterfall. Then he planted a few shrubs by the steps leading down to the backyard and I planted a few under some of the basement windows. Then came the mulch and it looks so much better every time we plant. We have planted tea olives, lugustrum, frost proof gardenias and Indian Hawthorne. I love the way he used some of our leftover waterfall rocks to build up and line the planting beds.

More shrubs and more steps!

This past week we have planted about 40 more shrubs around the pool, the waterfall and the pump/filter. Then we decided we might like to have steps going around to the top of the spa and Jay bought 4 of the huge rocks that were used to make our other steps, brought them home and somehow manhandled them enough to get them perfectly level and set! It is really looking so much better now even though we still have a lot of shrubs left to plant, mulch to put out and sod to put down.

The water in the pool is pretty cool now but the spa is awesome! It heats up to 105 degrees and we have been in it almost every day.

Sod and Salt

Today Jay and I laid 50 rolls of sod which equals to about 1 1/2 pallets. This was all we could get from the sod company and it kept us busy for a while. It looks so much better everytime we put down more sod or more shrubs. During the sodding, the pool man came by to give us an orientation on how to operate the pool, the remote to the pool, how to test the ph and chlorine and all kinds of stuff. We actually videoed it so we could refer back to what he said. It is a lot to learn. Then he put several bags of salt into the pool and some acid. We are not using chlorine but somehow the salt system turns salt into chlorine. I don't get it but it is a good thing and we are on board with it.

After the sod was down, we got some nice rocks and outlined a future flower bed. Then we picked up sticks and rocks in the rest of the yard.

THEN....we showered and got in the hot tub!!! Savannah and Jordan also got in and it feels absolutely wonderful!! Jordan came in right after football practice and Savannah did a quick change and got in, too. It was 100 degrees and amazing!!

The first big day at the pool

Wednesday night Jordan got in the pool after dinner. It was the first night this week that it hasn't been raining or storming all week. Savannah and I bought floats at the pool store yesterday and couldn't wait to use them. The water feels good even though it is not heated yet. I turned the lights on so we could swim at night and loved the way it looked so much that I left them on for a while. I am posting a picture of this but it didn't turn out that great.

Thursday the pool company came and installed the cleaner or vacuum that will just run around and vacuum all the time. I wish I had one of these inside my house. They also installed the jets in the hot tub and did a few other things I cannot even understand or explain. The pool is looking more blue since most of the calcium has been vacuumed out now. It will get to the darker blue we want as the calcium finally gets filtered out.

On Friday, the pool service came out and brushed it again, checked a few valves, added a few chemicals and check the filters. Next week they will start the salt system and check it to make sure the ph is at a good level. Savannah had some friends over and wanted the hot tub to warm up but there is something not quite right with a valve so they will fix that on Monday. When you want to warm up the hot tub, it drains a little so that the warm water doesn't spill over into the pool, but it would not stop draining so we had to stop trying to warm it. Savannah and her friends enjoyed sitting out by the pool Friday afternoon and night even without the hot tub working.

Saturday we went to a reunion in Knoxville and didn't get to swim but Savannah and her friends swam and hung out by the pool for a little while. It is good to have a place for them to congregate on the weekends.

Today (Sunday) we did a little more yard work, stepping stones and mulch but then enjoyed the pool when we got hot. We had a lot of friends come over and swim and I am going to post photos of how a pool is supposed to look. Full of people having a great time! Jay loves jumping off the diving wall as much as the kids!

The yard is coming along each day and we are getting more sod on Tuesday. I will be posting pictures to update every few days to show our progress.

Day 27 - Inspection

Today I was outside brushing the pool with the long pool brush to get rid of the calcium in it. The county inspectors came in to do their inspection for the barrier (fence) and the electrical and to make sure everything was done according to their county code. Earlier in the process, our pool builders had to move the pump behind the waterfall so I told the electrical inspector (who is picky and reportedly likes to fail people) that it had been moved as he had asked. He asked me if they had moved it back far enough and I said, "Surely they did....why would they want to do it again? That would be a lot of trouble!" He said he didn't have a tape measure with him and I told him I could get him one out of the house and he said, "Nah...surely they measured before they moved it" so .....I think we passed. Our pool builder said that since construction has slowed down they will fail you over and over just to keep charging the builder $25 or $50 per visit. The barrier inspector did give me a sticker which looks to be a seal of approval which tells me that we did pass the fence inspection. I didn't have the locks on the fence gates or the alarms on the doors from the house but I told him we had bought the locks. He asked me if I was going to put them on and I told him that we most certainly are going to put them on and then he handed me the sticker. They were nice and didn't seem to worried so I guess I will wait until I hear from the builder to see if we really did pass inspection!

The pool color is looking much better with each brushing. The calcium is white or yellow and when I move it around with the brush, the filters get a good bit of it. So the color of the pool is beginning to look more dark blue as planned. Also, our filter baskets were full of pine straw after the storm yesterday afternoon so at least I know they are working!

No photos yet today. It is very overcast.

Day 26 - Waterfall and Filters

Early this morning the pool company came to make sure the waterfall works and to turn on the filters and skimmers. A pool maintenance person was also here to brush the plaster of the pool to get some of the calcium from the stones and plaster moving for it to be filtered out of the water. I noticed right away how you could see the difference in color. The calcium is a yellowish white powder and makes the pool look green instead of dark blue. I could also see more of the quartz specks in the plaster once it was brushed, too. The specks are supposed to be more and more evident as the water clears each day. They also showed me how to turn the waterfall on and off as well as the lights in the control box. The remote control hasn't been programed yet but when it is, I can do that from inside the house. Jets for the spa/hot tub are ordered and will be in soon and installed as well as the salt for the whole system. It should all be together by Monday! I really enjoyed planting a few more shrubs this afternoon by the waterfall. I had Savannah and Bruiser to keep me company until it started raining, thundering and lightning. Can't complain because our sod and shrubs need every drop of water they can get!

Day 25 - Planting shrubs and stepping stones

This afternoon we had 39 shrubs to plant and several planting beds to make with top soil and sand. We got four beds tilled and planted 28 shrubs! The beds are beside the patio and beside the pool. We also planted 7 azalea bushes in random places on the hill behind the pool as well as some taller legustrum behind the waterfall to hide the pump and gardenias beside the waterfall. Jordan hauled wagon loads of shrubs and dirt and sand to us and put them by each work place for hours and then placed all the stepping stones leading from the patio to the pool. In order to make the stones look good, he used a long planting knife and hammer and kind of traced around each stone to cut the sod underneath it. Then he pulled that piece of sod out and planted it somewhere else in the yard and put sand underneath the stone. They look awesome and it was long and tedious work. Bruiser ran out of the house and sat in Jordan's lap for a while to encourage him. He had the whole fenced in back yard but preferred to sit with Jordan for a long time.

It got hot today and Jordan jumped in the pool several times to get cool. The chemicals are not in the pool just yet but it is okay to jump in and swim around for a little while. Jay did the same thing when we got completely finished. The three of us are exhausted from working so hard two days in a row! Savannah came home last night and today she and Ryan ran to Home Depot for us to get more stepping stones and bags of mulch. We mulched all the planting beds when we got finished today. It looks great! Lots more to do but we will focus on that at a slower pace now that we accomplished so much this weekend.

Day 24 - Sod

With the pool finished and the fence installed, all we had to do was fill the pool. We started filling it yesterday at 12:20pm and at 3:30am today I went outside to see how it was doing. It was almost up to the sitting ledge under the waterfall so I went back to sleep and got up at 7am and saw it was a few inches higher. We had three hoses going into the deep end so it helped to speed things up. Jay woke up when I did and we looked out the window from our room for a while and then decided to get our coffee and go outside and watch it finish filling. We took Bruiser with us and he had a blast running around inside the fence. As we were sitting there this morning, we got to thinking about how we had laid sod before at our last house and thought we would make a few phone calls today to see if we could find some zoysia sod to put between the house and the pool to make walking out to the pool less messy and muddy. We found a place that had two palates left! Jay went to borrow our neighbor's trailer, Jordan and I started picking up sticks and rocks. When Jay got back about an hour later he started raking the dirt and we started laying sod. The three of us worked so hard for hours putting this sod down but it looked so great and made such a difference we didn't mind. When we finished we got cleaned up and went to dinner then to Lowe's to buy some sand, topsoil and shrubs while we still had the trailer. We bought 32 shrubs, 10 bags of sand and a pallet of topsoil and an awesome yellow wagon! So we got that all loaded at the store and unloaded at home and are hoping that we can plant all of that tomorrow.

We can't swim in the pool yet because they put acid in it today to get rid of the calcium that leaks out from the plaster and the stone. It will be darker once the calcium is all filtered out of it.

Monday the pool company is coming out to get everything turned on and started up! It would have been great to jump in there today while we were working so hard!

Day 23 - Filling the pool and finishing the fence

After the plaster was done, they put a hose in the hot tub and a hose in the deep end. They wrap towels around the end of the hose so the water doesn't come out in a stream but more in a gentle spray. The hot tub filled up quickly and when the water got to the bottom of the tile, we had to move that hose to the deep end, too. It will hold approximately 18,000 - 20,000 gallons of water so we have a way to go. The color of the pool looks great and we see it getting darker, like we want it, as it gets deeper. We even moved some of the furniture down to the decking tonight!

Day 23 - Plaster and Fence

Early this morning the pool plaster company showed up and started mixing up the plaster and quartz for the interior of the pool. We chose plaster and quartz because of the smoothness of its finish. They spray the plaster onto the walls of the pool with a hose that is attached to a macine on a truck. The machine has two men adding water and plaster into a mixer that is connected to the hose. The actual spraying doesn't take long at all . The most time consuming part of this job is how they continually smooth it with trowels, sponges and all kinds of tools. It goes from looking very rough to perfectly smooth. The plaster was mixed with gray powder and then salt and pepper quartz flakes were added. When we will the pool the water is naturally blue so the end result is a dark blue pool which is what we have been striving for all along. There are hundreds of combinations we could have chosen but we knew what we wanted all along as far as color. Communicating that to the plaster company is difficult because we don't know what combinations create what color so we had to do a lot of running around to look at other pools. We met some nice people who allowed us to scrutinize their pool colors!

A little later this morning the fence company showed up to start installing the fencing. They were here a few days ago putting the black chain link fence in the back of the yard where the school's fence leaves a big opening. We closed this off because codes mandates that the whole area be fenced when you have a pool. This is also good to keep people from occasionally cutting through our back yard during school events. However, the fence going up today is the pretty black steel fence. We got the "puppy pickets" which are closer together since Bruiser is so little that he could possibly escape through the regular size pickets. It will also help keep other critters out of the yard. I think we have had deer nibbling on some of our shrubs in the past and I have heard coyotes in the middle of the night.