The Wilson's Build Their Dream Home Update-Swimming Pool

When we first started building our house, we knew we wanted a backyard that could eventually accommodate a swimming pool. When we moved into our house back in October, we had NO intention of building a swimming pool for a couple of years. We had just built a house for goodness' sake! Well, then we had a very mild winter and an incredibly hot spring; before we knew it, we were talking with pool builders. We talked to one of our friends who is a local contractor and found out that he had been wanting to start building pools for several years. He'd done all his research and knew that it was something he was ready to try. We decided to be his first pool customers :) 

Digging began at the beginning of June, but I was at the beach on my girl's trip when they did the dig, so these are pictures from Josh's phone that he sent to me to keep me updated while I was gone. The actual pool construction was supposed to take only 1 1/2 to 2 weeks, but then the weather decided to completely change things up for us and it took a little longer than we thought! We took pictures throughout the entire building process, so here they are in order.

Digging the hole and putting up the walls.

Plumbing work

Time for the Pool Krete

Another view from the deep end

After the Pool Krete had dried, Josh and Doug had the task of hanging the liner. Josh said that went a lot easier than he had imagined. After they hung the liner, they had to start filling up the pool. To do that they had to attach Shop-Vac hoses behind the liner to suck up any air that was behind the liner. Filling up the pool was going to take about a day and a half, so other than checking to make sure the Shop-Vacs were working and that there weren't any wrinkles, there wasn't much they could do but wait. Then trouble started...

First, it started to rain causing the power to go out and making the Shop-Vacs stop working. Because the vacuums stopped working, wrinkles started appearing in the liner and rain was getting behind the liner as well. They had to stop filling up the pool and start draining it instead to get all the wrinkles out and to get the water out from behind the liner. That took almost an entire day of work for Josh and Doug. 

They got all the wrinkles out and they started filling up the pool again. I missed out on all this excitement because I was visiting my parents for Andrea's baby shower. By the time I got back home, the pool was almost filled up. We thought we were in the clear. What Doug and Josh completely forgot about though was that the electrician had been by over the weekend and had installed a timer. When they had to drain the pool because of the rain, they'd set the filter to WASTE. If you know anything about pools, then you've probably already guessed what happened next. 

By 1 o'clock Monday morning the pool was almost completely full. I went outside turned off all the water hoses and went to bed only to be awakened frantically by Josh at 6 AM that morning. There was no water in the pool. ZERO. ZIP. NADA. Every drop of it was gone. 24,000 gallons all GONE. Apparently, the timer was set to come on at 4 AM that morning and since the filter was set to WASTE, all the water drained out of the pool. The plus to this awful situation was that Josh had gone out there at 6 AM and noticed and turned everything off. Thankfully, the pump didn't burn up! I was sick to my stomach. Josh was sick to his stomach, mad, and upset. It was awful! There was nothing else to do though but start the whole process of filling it back up again. UGH! By the time Josh got home from work on Monday, the pool was about halfway full. After the weekend he'd had, he needed some time to cool off and wind down. He and Eli decided to test the water :)

My two little fish :)

Eli just had to try out some goggles. Haha!

We finally got the pool full without anymore issues. Thank you, Lord! Now we had to sit back and wait for concrete. Doug and his guys built all the forms for the concrete decking around the pool and the sidewalks, but the concrete guy couldn't come for a couple of day. All we could do was wait. We still got to use the pool though, so it wasn't all bad, but it was kind of hard to keep the pool clean because of all the dirt. We were so excited about having a pool though that we didn't mind cleaning it.

Yay, it's all working!

Our pool minus concrete

It took about another week for us to get concrete because it decided to rain every single day that we were waiting for concrete, but finally the day arrived and the concrete guys came! Eli and I were so excited that we went outside to watch them pour the concrete. 

Concrete!

We waited a couple of days before we started to walk on it, but after that it was time to SWIM! Eli was so excited and so were we! He couldn't wait to jump off the diving board into the pool!

We still have a long way to go to make the pool area look how I see it in my head, but for now we're very happy. I can't believe that I have a pool in my backyard! I'm so happy and so thankful! We have literally been in the pool every single day since we got it-except for those few days when Eli had swimmer's ear and we couldn't. 

Now we are in the process of growing grass so we can keep the dirt out of the pool. Once we get some grass we'll begin to landscape and add some plants. I have lots of plans for what I want to do, but patience is what I need right now :)

I'm so excited about all the fun we're going to have in our pool, all the pool parties we'll be able to host, all the friends that will be able to come swim with us. Now I can't imagine us without a pool and I'm so thankful!