Thanks for those links. I really want a sealer that gives it the wet look as the look of the travertine when wet is stunning bc it highlights the variation in the colors. I found a post on here where someone gave a review about the Stonetech salt water one (same product TM recommends to seal with) and said it does not give the wet look so that was a let down. I have been trying to find water based/silane sealers and Stonetech was the main one. Ultimately, if the best sealer doesn't give the wet look then we will go with what functions best over looks. I was going to call Laticrete as I see they own Stonetech now and see what they say.
Onto pool progress...
Yesterday the coping guy showed up. I saw him setting up his station and then grab the travertine from the new crate that was delivered to fix the deck and for our door patios. We had to stop him and explain this travertine is for the deck only and we were told more travertine was supposed to be brought by from the deck company from the local store. Oy vey.
So he had to pack everything back up and leave and another day of no work. I had already confirmed with PB that more coping was being ordered from the local store (it looks completely different than the TM stuff) so yet again, lack of communication.
When we asked what he was going to do with the pieces he already sawed apart, leaving the bull nose butting up to a flat piece, he said he was going to cut the bull nose off and make sure all the pieces were the same width, place them on the spa, and then he would bull nose the edge himself.
My concern is we paid for the store to bull nose the travertine only for it to be cut off? This is all confusing. The first day this guy was out here, he showed us he would cut the pieces so there was a middle seam and he would cut it so the already bullnosed pieces would be inside and outside the spa. Not sure why he changed it.
Also, the bubbles continue to be a problem. Apparently they cannot make them work the the size conduit that was placed before the shell was shot so the construction manager was out here yesterday cutting a huge hole in the sun shelf to access the pipe to place a larger one. The concrete dust has now coated the deck and the entire screen. We had rain and barely anything came off. It is pretty nasty out there now and he isn't finished.
Lastly, spoke to the plaster guy. He clearly was not happy that I was questioning why he does things the way he does and when I mentioned I wanted stonescapes mini pebble with the glass beads and abalone, he got very "firm" telling me that is not done. When I explained my friends in other areas of the country had mini and glass, he was all flustered. His explanation that mini pebble and glass beads were different sizes so when you mix them it doesn't work as well as regular pebble. He said they don't acid wash mini pebble like they do regular pebble? And said 40% of the glass would show in mini but 60-70% would show in regular bc of the size. So I was concerned about the roughness of regular pebbles so he met us at a pool he did with regular pebble and glass and then took us to a pool with just regular pebble. The one with glass added in was smoother. We then started discussing which color pebbles did we want to remove to add in the glass (you have to take out a bag of pebble to replace with a bag of glass) and he kept insisting that the pebble color does not effect the pool color and only the plaster color does. And while yes, the majority of the color comes from the plaster, the pebbles do effect the color and man he would not come off that at all. I ended up saying to remove 2 bags of white pebble and add 2 bags of blue glass but his logic doesn't make any sense about pebbles not effecting the color. If that was the case, why would each color have a specific mixture of each color???
Big Will has been super helpful and we chatted on the phone about the finish esp bc everything this guy said isn't done is what Will had done so it was confusing. The pics and pools we saw of his work were nice. And I get it. He is an alpha male and I was challenging him in a sense bc I questioned him and PB prob warned him that I asked a lot of questions and go online so he was on the offensive from the moment we spoke. When I would defer to him for a recommendation, like which color pebble to remove for the glass, he would just say it doesn't matter, which again was frustrating. He also is adamant that abalone shell is not to be mixed into the plaster at all. And the 2nd pool he showed us (this was regular pebble tropics blue with 1 bag of hand cast abalone), he kept saying look at all that abalone! And I'm like yeah I see it but I want more than this and boy, not happy with that. Kept saying he can't guarantee that it will look like more etc etc. So I finally said well you can try. And even better is you can let me hand cast it myself so when it doesn't look like I want, I am responsible. Ha. But he def didnt like me questioning him and I told him it is not personal at all but after every experience we have had with subs on this project, we are more wary and are going to ask more questions. Which we have a right to. He may not like it but should be willing to answer without getting his feelings hurt.
This is the regular pebble Tropics Blue with hand cast abalone
Did he not see it or just bounce off while playing around?
