Wrong plaster color

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A

anderson110

0
Jul 2, 2012
62
Mountain House, CA
I am having a new pool installed and a disaster has struck. We requested a "midnight blue" color and our PB used "tahoe blue" instead today. This might not be a huge problem except that it seems much lighter than the "tahoe blue" sample, and a very big difference from the "midnight blue" we asked for.

I looked through all the paperwork and could not find it in writing anywhere that we requested "midnight blue", but we sat down together in a store and both my wife and I remember very clearly that's what we both wanted.

Am I just screwed and have to get used to it? Is there anything we can do to help darken the appearance, which, to our eyes, looks like a cheap vinyl liner baby blue? We both don't like it.
 
Seems like you should be talking to the installer and not random internet people :mrgreen:

If it was not written down anywhere, then you may be out of luck. You could certainly have it chipped back out and the correct finish applied.

One note is that it is hard to get a feel for the color the pool will end up just looking at the installed finish before any washing and filling.
 
If it's not in the contract, then technically you can't do anything about it from a legal standpoint. But if you specifically told your PB what color you wanted and he did something else, he made a big mistake and the right thing to do would be to replaster it the color you wanted. That's not just an oops sorry kind of mistake.
 
The largest problem with PB in general is that the crews are always building the last pool and not your pool.

Practical alternatives:

1. Live with it. See what it looks like in a month. If you are ok then. Live with it.

2.Replace it. Once its in you have to chip it out. Messy dirty and guarantied not to look exactly like you want it to look. With plaster color its important to look at a pool with the plaster you want color swatches don't work very well.

Legal

If the contract is silent as to plaster color then you have a good case. It is important that you notify PB in writing immediately upon learning it is a different color. Give the PB a chance to mitigate. If he refuses to do anything go get some bids to fix it.

It would be interesting to know what he ordered. Ask him for a copy of his suppliers job invoice. If he just took it out of stock did he have midnight blue in stock? He must have written something down when you met him. There must be some internal record. Do they have a job log? Ask for a copy. Most construction companies have 2 -- the office log and the superintendent's log -- many PBs only have one -- the office log. But ask for it. It should say what you ordered and what they requested from the warehouse or supplier.

If you want to sue in small claims court. Use the Bids as evidence.

Lawsuits (even in small claims) are never fun. You need to decide -- do I want a war or can I live with it.
 
I have seen on here before that sometimes the manufacturer messed up with the color order or that a batch of plaster was mislabeled. Then it wouldn't be even the PB who is at fault. Then again, PB should have been there when plaster was being applied and stop it from being put on in the first place if it was the wrong color. Mine was.
 
jojoman said:
I have seen on here before that sometimes the manufacturer messed up with the color order or that a batch of plaster was mislabeled. Then it wouldn't be even the PB who is at fault. Then again, PB should have been there when plaster was being applied and stop it from being put on in the first place if it was the wrong color. Mine was.
Click to expand...

I remember reading that on your thread - it's why I keep insisting the project manager be onsite for the plaster installation. This is the part that scares me the most. -Karen
 
Ouch, this is a sticky situation. best of luck. I have nothing really to add, except to say Midnight blue makes for a very very dark pool.

We had a plaster mix up...kinda...except ours was that the pool builder hired an outside of the area contractor who was in town doing a pool for my contractors brother (my contractors brother has the rep as being the best in the area...but he was over 20k higher than my contractor on my pool)...That meant I got quartz plaster for the price of marble. It was the best surprise I've had in years when I saw the bags of quartz plaster on a trailer in front of my house.
 

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We decided to just live with it. The PB claimed he could tweak it with a "pool restart" in two weeks if we weren't satisfied with the color, but I think he's just buying time for us to calm down and accept it as-is. The color is deepening a bit as it cures. It is still much lighter than we wanted, but it looks ok.

Now I'm struggling with the cover installer damaging the coping somehow with big scrape marks. Of course he denies it, but I have a picture the day before he worked and the day after, and the scrapes appear between the two photos.

Frustrating.
 
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