Our New Pool

Our first project was to convert our single gate into a double gate. "This shouldn't be too hard." For the record, don't ever start off a project by saying those words. It's like you jinx yourself or something. Day One, took off the old gate & cut part of the fence to create the 2nd gate. Dug post hole & set post. Day two, attached both gates with hinges. Couldn't figure out why they wouldn't hang just right. Then we noticed the post was rotten. So rotten that I ripped it out with my bare hands! Then we had the great joy of digging out the concrete from the old post so we could set the new one. That block of concrete was huge, but James pulled it out of there. I still don't know how he did it! Amazing!

The installers came to level out the yard. They weren't there an hour with the Bobcat before they noticed we had "plastic soil". I've never even heard of a such a thing. But basically it's soil that when you step on it, it feels like you're walking on an air mattress. We waited for two days to see if it would dry out. Three days later they came back. We thought we had just a tiny spot left that could be dug out & replaced with fine gravel.

Well that tiny spot ended up being about 5feet deep & probably 3x6 feet! Needless to say, our installation cost twice as much as it was suppose to.
After the installation was complete, our hard work continued. We had to take the left over dirt & back fill around the pool. It looks like our pool is only 3 feet deep, but we back filled about two feet deep around most of the pool. Once we were done back filling, we still had about 1/3 of the dirt left. "Now what do we do with it?" Well, we couldn't worry about that. We had to hurry & dig a trench & lay conduit & electrical for the pool pump. OMG digging a trench is HARD work!

Then James, our friend Don & I worked on edging, laying river rock & stepping stones. That's when we decided we've done enough. It was time to call in the professionals.

Then it started to rain. It's a good thing we called a landscaper. He came on this day & saw that we had a huge drainage issue. Apparently our pool was placed right where the water usually drains. This created a river in our backyard.





So the landscapers came. They hauled away the left over dirt, buried our gutter drains & regrade the soil to drain into a catch basin. They buried a drainage system around the pool & to the back of the yard.





Then they laid beautiful sod! It's so pretty. It would have been nice to do the whole yard, but we were trying to save some money. So in the fall I'm going to fertilize & seed the old grass. Hopefully it will blend in well with the sod next spring. Buster loves the sod. I've been catching him rolling around in it. Crazy dog!

Here's our beautiful new double gate. Now we just need to stain the rest of the fence to match. Oh yes, and build a deck. That will come later. Time to enjoy the pool!