** If you want pics of Quartzscapes Barbados Blue, send me a PM with your email address and I'll send you some.** Sorry my pics are gone .
I figured I should start my thread, so I don't get called out by the locals doing builds, since I've been asking them for information! Mine isn't nearly as nice as any of the others in the Vegas area though, so it's a bit of an embarrassment... I joined TFP in 2013 when I bought a house with a pool and had no idea what to do with it, I've been maintaining my water by TFP standards for the past few years and the only pretty thing about my pool all these years has been the water! We wanted to do a major renovation to the pool 2 years ago, but life happened and it got put on hold.
A couple months ago, we decided that it was time to do just a basic facelift on the pool, make it less of an embarrassment lol, so we started a DIY renovation. We are planning to start a major renovation inside the house this year, gutting the kitchen and 2 bathrooms, etc., so we just wanted to make the backyard "presentable" for a couple years then do a pool renovation when we finished inside. Our pool is an O/B pool that was done in 1999-2000 and some was not done well, luckily the plaster lasted 17 years. The biggest problem is the concrete coping and deck. Our original DIY plan was to remove the spray deck material, resurface some of the bad areas on the concrete, and re-spray the cool deck texture, sounds easy enough, right? We spent days grinding off spray deck material, rented a machine for the large areas, did all the coping by hand with grinders, I can't even explain how messy that was!! We discovered the concrete that was hidden under 1/2" of spray deck was in worse shape than we thought, we also removed landscaping edging blocks and river rock from along the coping edge and discovered a very poor quality job was done on the coping, some areas the concrete was only about 1" thick! While the pool was empty for us to grind off the deck material, the plaster started failing, thought it would just be a few small areas, but it quickly spread throughout the pool and continues to get worse. That's when we decided to give up on that plan...so, we are now going to remove all of the concrete deck, re-plaster, new water line tile, remove the water feature, put in a real fence and finally landscape.
I'll say it now, I hate everything about this pool LOL, but it is what it is and unfortunately we can't afford to change everything we don't like about it!
Here's what we started with...
Don't worry, the make shift fence is for dogs, not kids!
This water feature doesn't look too bad, other than being skimpy, but wait till I post the backside of it later!
The yard use to stop here, but we took down that wall and moved it to the property line adding about 40ft to the backyard...which now needs to be landscaped! The other unfortunate thing is that a few feet from the pool edge in the grass is a septic tank and the leech field goes out to the dirt area, limits some landscaping/hardscaping options.
The 2 a/c units are gone, we had 2 new ones installed and placed on the side of the house out of view.
Satellite overview of the lot. The fortunate thing is that we are not on a "typical Vegas" lot, we are in a rural preservation area and we also don't have an HOA to deal with .
We also moved a wall on the side of the house, so the shed will be removed and a real one built out of view on the side of the house.
I figured I should start my thread, so I don't get called out by the locals doing builds, since I've been asking them for information! Mine isn't nearly as nice as any of the others in the Vegas area though, so it's a bit of an embarrassment... I joined TFP in 2013 when I bought a house with a pool and had no idea what to do with it, I've been maintaining my water by TFP standards for the past few years and the only pretty thing about my pool all these years has been the water! We wanted to do a major renovation to the pool 2 years ago, but life happened and it got put on hold.
A couple months ago, we decided that it was time to do just a basic facelift on the pool, make it less of an embarrassment lol, so we started a DIY renovation. We are planning to start a major renovation inside the house this year, gutting the kitchen and 2 bathrooms, etc., so we just wanted to make the backyard "presentable" for a couple years then do a pool renovation when we finished inside. Our pool is an O/B pool that was done in 1999-2000 and some was not done well, luckily the plaster lasted 17 years. The biggest problem is the concrete coping and deck. Our original DIY plan was to remove the spray deck material, resurface some of the bad areas on the concrete, and re-spray the cool deck texture, sounds easy enough, right? We spent days grinding off spray deck material, rented a machine for the large areas, did all the coping by hand with grinders, I can't even explain how messy that was!! We discovered the concrete that was hidden under 1/2" of spray deck was in worse shape than we thought, we also removed landscaping edging blocks and river rock from along the coping edge and discovered a very poor quality job was done on the coping, some areas the concrete was only about 1" thick! While the pool was empty for us to grind off the deck material, the plaster started failing, thought it would just be a few small areas, but it quickly spread throughout the pool and continues to get worse. That's when we decided to give up on that plan...so, we are now going to remove all of the concrete deck, re-plaster, new water line tile, remove the water feature, put in a real fence and finally landscape.
I'll say it now, I hate everything about this pool LOL, but it is what it is and unfortunately we can't afford to change everything we don't like about it!
Here's what we started with...
Don't worry, the make shift fence is for dogs, not kids!
This water feature doesn't look too bad, other than being skimpy, but wait till I post the backside of it later!
The yard use to stop here, but we took down that wall and moved it to the property line adding about 40ft to the backyard...which now needs to be landscaped! The other unfortunate thing is that a few feet from the pool edge in the grass is a septic tank and the leech field goes out to the dirt area, limits some landscaping/hardscaping options.
The 2 a/c units are gone, we had 2 new ones installed and placed on the side of the house out of view.
Satellite overview of the lot. The fortunate thing is that we are not on a "typical Vegas" lot, we are in a rural preservation area and we also don't have an HOA to deal with .
We also moved a wall on the side of the house, so the shed will be removed and a real one built out of view on the side of the house.