I finally get to post a thread here!! Renovating pool and yard

meticulous in his notes and even considered silly things my daughter wants without dismissing her entirely which holds a lot of weight with me
Well it has ZERO to do with pool building, but it has EVERYTHING with judging them as a human being. So if he was kind even when your daughter was ‘being a kid’ and interrupting with silly thoughts, then you know he is a good human being. Which is exactly the kind of PB I’d like to deal with when all the issues arise that are part of any pool build. He will most likely take the time and care to answer/fix all of your own ‘silly little questions’ and concerns.
 
Well it has ZERO to do with pool building, but it has EVERYTHING with judging them as a human being. So if he was kind even when your daughter was ‘being a kid’ and interrupting with silly thoughts, then you know he is a good human being. Which is exactly the kind of PB I’d like to deal with when all the issues arise that are part of any pool build. He will most likely take the time and care to answer/fix all of your own ‘silly little questions’ and concerns.

that was our thought as well that it reflected the care they would probably use in the reno & want to do a good job, most people won't pay attention to a 13yo girl wanting a pretty turtle in the bottom of the pool or listen to her say she wants a bench under the waterfall so she can sit in the waterfall and just listen to her likes & dislikes about the pool currently.
 
Christina...congrats on the "new" pool, neighbor. Your pool looks very similar to my 1993 Shasta build, especially the CAP TILE (in place of the "real" coping). I hope I am not too late but here is some input on a few of your items:

the must haves
  1. Resurface : if you end up piecing together some of the pool work from various contractors/workers, I would consider hiring Prado and Sons directly for pebbletec refinish (they are an official installer in the Valley). And as it turns out they are subcontracted by other pool builders to do the work...I found it was much cheaper (by about $2K) to go directly to them. Are you dissatisfied with the current finish or is it deteriorating? hard to tell from the pciture.
  2. New Tile
  3. poured equip pad
  4. fix plumbing
  5. new skimmer : is something wrong with your current skimmer?
  6. add skimmer : your pool isn't that big...I would really make sure you need this. I found out about pool swirl (using the wall returns as "directioners") only a few years ago...25 years later than I should have. The result is awesome...no problems at all with my skimmer. It took only a bit of tuning to get the toilet bowl effect. Do you have at least two wall returns?
  7. add heater/chiller
  8. label pipes
  9. new light : out-of-curiosity, was your pool equipped with Fiberstars optical lighting?
  10. Removable fence to keep my dogs out (brats) 😂😂

The wish LIst
  1. Decking
  2. Slide
  3. Hard plumb backwash
  4. another outdoor spigot closer to equipment
  5. pool light working
  6. even out back wall/ remove sheer descent : see (7) below
  7. add real coping : 6 & 7 might require completely taking out the existing deck and waterfall build-up area. That cap tile is a bit of a problem to replace, in my case I had to do it because the cap tile itself had some broken bits and I couldn't find replacements for it...replacements might exist. You might want to take a look at my remodel thread (in my signature) to see how I tackled that problem, but I don't know if it is replicable or advisable for your case. Adding coping on top of the existing deck makes the waterline even further from the deck surface...a farther reach up for kids swimming.
  8. remove all gravel
  9. Add turf or fake grass
  10. Pergola?
  11. small side stamped concrete patio?
Good Luck!
[/QUOTE]
 
My current skimmer doesn't have a weir and is super tiny inside so I have to buy weird after market gimmicks to even get it to skim, then adding another it is 100% needed as apparently every leaf in the subdivision blows into my pool year round current skimmer can't keep up so we spend our swim time walking around with nets which is not my idea of a fun relaxing pool time.. the pool currently has no light or switch for the old light (stupid seller's) the light is currently laying on the deck and was held in with one wrong screw and the face is cracked all over.

on the resurface, the previous owners destroyed it with horrible maintenance & the aggressive water they had brewing in it, the pebbles currently come off and my entire family is tired of being scraped up from it.. if u can find my thread from last year when we bought the house you can see the entire drama unfold with it
 
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All the appointments are complete & for the most part we feel good about it once all the estimates are in, we will start narrowing down all of them gave us the same timeline so there was no big delays or discrepancies Which for us they said, booking march / april and complete no later than end june but 90% sure it would be early june
 
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we are still waiting on a few estimates to come in and have another one coming out today. I will be glad when this part is over and we get them all back lol
 
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Goodbye anxious waiting and wondering and HELLLLLLLLLO sticker shock.

....... they WANT HOW MUCH ???? :laughblue::laughblue::laughblue:


naaaa it hasn't been to bad or surprising really... my focus has been more who is checking off more boxes on the list... which has been altered like 3 times since I started lol
 
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2 well known truths :

1) no matter what you picked it will be beautiful which I always relate to puppies. It’s hard to find anything wrong with any of them, even when they’re not ‘your breed’.

2). You’ll coulda woulda shoulda with the rest of us forever because human nature. :)
 
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I think it's harder with a reno because it's not something we designed to begin with so kind of stuck working with what we have just improving it as much as we can reasonably... it would be easier for me if we were doing a brand new pool, those decisions I can make - this is just much harder in the grand scheme
 
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Oh yeah. It will still come out fantastic tho. (y)

I really hope so but thanks for the vote of confidence lol I have spent many years perusing this area of the forum dreaming of a day I could do something similar to everyone else and now that day is slowly becoming reality
 
so my DH yesterday had a landscaper come by to give a quote on some of the landscaping issues. His hope is that she is cheaper so on our reno quotes we can remove those parts and lower the cost there lol we will see how that plays out... she should have that back to him later this week.
 
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I think that's a good idea.
me too, and we both really liked her.. she spent 2 hours here last night going over every little detail with him, which made him feel good AND he said he could actually "visualize" finally what she was saying. there were some recommendations she made also we hadn't considered so I am very interested to see what she comes up with.
 
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I just think it makes sense for you to go to the expert in the field. Pool builder for pool, landscaper for yard. There's a guy in our neighborhood who everyone loves for their yard. Let me get you his contact info.
 
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now I need help, we have most of the estimates in and we are narrowing down to our top 3 and reaching back out to them with a unified and narrowed down RFP. What is a good payment structure, most of their estimates had similar breakdowns but some were just like ummm WHAT lol so I would like something reasonable for us both, they all had a 50% at contract signing which is fine really, it's the rest of it I'm unsure with, I know I don't pay for it all until it is done and we are ALL happy with it. I'm open to input here :)
 
Here is a thread with some insights:

NO way as in adult word NO to finial payment BEFORE the water is in the pool and equipment is running!!!
 

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