Yes, yet another pool build in the Austin area.
We are very excited to be breaking ground in the AM! This process started back in January and after spending a fair amount time reading online reviews, BBB complaints, and talking with friends & family about their personal building experiences, we made appointments to meet with four builders.
The first one came up with a pretty decent design but the cost was ridiculous... nearly 2X what the others were asking.
The second builder came out, spent a few minutes talking with me in the back yard about what we were looking for, and then the salesman asked me what our budget was. When I told him, he laughed and said, "We don't waste our time with anything priced under $80K." With that, he turned and walked out of my back yard.
Okay... on to the third. This was a builder we'd had a really solid conversation with several years ago at the Austin Home and Garden Show and were hopeful about the opportunity to work with this builder. He ended up being the cheapest of the bunch but the design was unimaginative and he was very slow, unresponsive, and worst of all, just didn't seem to be the least bit enthusiastic about building a pool.
Finally came number 4. They built a really nice pool for our neighbors across the street last year and based on how their pool turned out, I feared they would be out of our price range. Not only did they come up with the best design of any of the builders, they were the most prepared, organized, professional, responsive, enthusiastic, friendly, and to top it all off, they were only moderately higher than the lowest bid and still within our budget.
So in the end, it was a pretty easy decision. We singed a contract a little over a week ago. HOA and permits were taken care of in just a few days and they dropped by yesterday evening to spray the yard. They said they'd start excavation on Monday but I got a call this afternoon from the Construction Manager to inform me that they'd gotten ahead of schedule on another job and would be able to start first thing in the AM.
Here are some mockups of the design. Colors are not accurate for any of the materials but everything else is just the way we want it.
And here are a couple of shots of the yard on the eve of excavation
We are very excited to be breaking ground in the AM! This process started back in January and after spending a fair amount time reading online reviews, BBB complaints, and talking with friends & family about their personal building experiences, we made appointments to meet with four builders.
The first one came up with a pretty decent design but the cost was ridiculous... nearly 2X what the others were asking.
The second builder came out, spent a few minutes talking with me in the back yard about what we were looking for, and then the salesman asked me what our budget was. When I told him, he laughed and said, "We don't waste our time with anything priced under $80K." With that, he turned and walked out of my back yard.
Okay... on to the third. This was a builder we'd had a really solid conversation with several years ago at the Austin Home and Garden Show and were hopeful about the opportunity to work with this builder. He ended up being the cheapest of the bunch but the design was unimaginative and he was very slow, unresponsive, and worst of all, just didn't seem to be the least bit enthusiastic about building a pool.
Finally came number 4. They built a really nice pool for our neighbors across the street last year and based on how their pool turned out, I feared they would be out of our price range. Not only did they come up with the best design of any of the builders, they were the most prepared, organized, professional, responsive, enthusiastic, friendly, and to top it all off, they were only moderately higher than the lowest bid and still within our budget.
So in the end, it was a pretty easy decision. We singed a contract a little over a week ago. HOA and permits were taken care of in just a few days and they dropped by yesterday evening to spray the yard. They said they'd start excavation on Monday but I got a call this afternoon from the Construction Manager to inform me that they'd gotten ahead of schedule on another job and would be able to start first thing in the AM.
Here are some mockups of the design. Colors are not accurate for any of the materials but everything else is just the way we want it.
And here are a couple of shots of the yard on the eve of excavation
on the PBs..........how do some of them stay in business? At least they made it easy for you. 
