We started with the "after" in Part-1 ... in Part-2, we'll delve into the before and walk you through the two pools we've built.
But first with the extreme before.
in 2011, we entertained the thought is putting in a pool... this would seriously disrupt the backyard we had worked to plan and develop, but the summers were getting hotter and we were getting less enthused with watering and caring for a lawn that we simply looked at and didn't use that much.
From the initial post, we got a good bit of feedback including a visit from Royal pools. And I meticulously measured and drew the layout of our yard — this would be a rendering that would see countless versioning over the next 10 years.
[It's amazing that our final pool looks so much like the original rendering from 2011!]
[It's amazing to look back and see how far the yard has come from the first time we looked at the house.]
[The first iteration found us clearing and cleaning up a lot, but ultimately left us with a yard that was pretty, but not terribly usable.]
One of the things that we're glad we did — but wish that we had done sooner — is to remove everything. Seriously: If you are tackling a project like this consider taking everything back to a blank slate. Over at least three backyard versions, we ended up removing every bit of concrete, most all of the trees and even the fencing (which we've re-done twice!). Why?
• Concrete: Concrete will never match old to new and the chances of the concrete that you have right there being the exact size, shape and finish you want in the end is extremely unlikely — plus, who knows whats under there. We found odd wiring, weird bits of metal (a bike rim!) and all sorts of randomness. If you're going to do it, do it right!
• Trees: Trees have a finite lifespan and the likelihood of a tree being planted in the perfect place is not frequent. We must have removed 75 trees from the yard — from saplings to two giant mulberry trees. We did retain four: A California Pepper planted in the back corner which we love, a fig tree which delights us each summer with fruit, a Golden Rain tree which has a nice street presence, and a Hollywood Juniper which flanks the other corner of the yard. We tried to save a few, but after a Silver Dollar Eucalyptus almost topped our neighbors house in a windstorm, we saw the value of pulling out what was past-its-prime. In the end, we did replant trees, but carefully considered the type of tree, its growth and its placement.
In the end, while it'd have been wise to build a $40K pool in 2011 (vs. an $80K pool in 2018) the Royal pools design didn't have the things we ultimately wanted and it took me building our own small pool first to figure all of that out. I'm not sure — at that time — that we could have planned what we see now given the resources (inspiration, input, etc) we had at hand.
[From before to after – quite a difference. Odd that the after seems much more spacious, too.]
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