Pool Renovation-Phases 1 & 2

So the house we bought here in Texas has a pool. When we were looking for houses, Chris and the boys wanted a pool desperately. I believe Chris' exact words were, "I'm not living in 100 degree Texas in the summer without a pool." So every house we looked at had a pool. 

Some of the houses we looked at had really fancy pools, but the house wasn't right. And I kept saying we can't buy the house for the pool. So we decided to the buy the house that was the best for us, but the pool might need some work. 

This is our pool. 

The woman we bought the house from lined one side of the pool with very pretty flowers and plants. They looked prettier when we moved in. When I took these pictures, they were starting to die and Maggie had decided she liked to trample all over them and tear them out of the ground. 


Plus since they were pretty flowers, they attracted bees and bugs. Which isn't too much fun to have around when you are trying to relax in the pool. The boys wouldn't even go to that side of the pool because every time they did, a bee would buzz their head.  They would then come flying out of the pool. (I should clarify that by saying it is the boys who would come flying out of the pool; the bees were content to have their pretty flowers to fly around. )

We decided that our first major project would be to get the pool looking the way we want it to. And by doing it this fall, we got some discounts and it would be all ready to use next summer. 

We started calling companies to get bids on pulling out all of the plants on that side of the pool. We also decided to cut down that tree on the side of the house. It was dropping leaves in the pool all of the time, and it was really too close to the house as well. 

So we decided on a company and they started to get to work. Here is the pool with all of the plants taken down. Who knew there is a great brick retaining wall back there??? 

And another view without the plants and the tree cut down. 

When we removed the plants we decided to have concrete poured all around the pool. This will give us much more space for chairs and lounges. So this is phase two: they leveled the ground and put up forms for the concrete to be poured. We are adding concrete all the way up the retaining wall.

We also wanted to add some more concrete on the other side. 

Next up is the pouring of the concrete. And then the final phase is having an overlay put down to make everything the same color. 

I can't wait for this to be done! I never know when they are going to show up for work. I will be sitting here and all of the sudden I will have a bunch of men in my back yard working. Plus it is taking a lot longer to finish than we thought it would. But isn't that always the case with renovations!??

Thanks again for visiting me!