Sorry to keep everyone in suspense! You're right... It was a tiring day. I must have been running on adrenalin since 5 am this morning when I got up, and it hit me like a ton of bricks when they left at 3 pm. Then I had to take a nap, make dinner, then take my daughter her Scottish Dance class. We just got home. Never a dull moment! But no worries, Madame Librarian, baby is still safely growing inside and nothing premature is happening.
I have been trying to upload my pictures to photobucket to include in this update, but first the site was under maintenance, and now I keep getting upload errors. But I will keep trying.
The pool looks really good. The crew was very accommodating to my requests, and would check things and clarify things when I asked. I basically parked myself outside all day, watching everything and moving around to keep out of the direct line of gunite fire. Throughout the process I've become more confident in speaking up, so that was helpful today. It seems like they listened to my request for as dry a mix as possible for the gunite, but inexplicably to me at the end when they did the floor, they started using a lot of water. I asked about it and they said it was necessary for them to "flash" the floor this way. It was pretty wet looking and the guys had to work backwards out of the pool to cover up their sloppy footprints in the wet gunite. The guy made it sound like this is how they always do it, and it was necessary to do it this way. I was skeptical based on what Brian had posted, but there wasn't much I could do about it. I just hope it doesn't cause me any problems with the shell.
When it came time to pay, the foreman called his boss (the guy I'd been dealing with) and I was given the price. We had used 60(!) yards of gunite, plus 4 pegboards that helped form the outside of the walls above the soil.
I asked, "Is this your cash price?" and the owner said, "Oh, let me get that for you," and he came back with a lower price.
-I replied, "That's only a 3% discount."
-"Yes, M'am."
-"Can we do 5%?"
And then he came back with the total reflecting the 5% discount! I was quite pleased. It just goes to show, it never hurts to ask!
