Tidy Up (& Tile #2)

Thursday was busy with small jobs. The weather has been terrific so I'm just about ready to start swimming NOW. The guys came and pulled all the wooden framework off the outside of the pool and spa. They also bent the exposed rebar inwards, so we could stop scraping our shins on them every time we walked around the pool (these will be used by the electrician to bond the pool).

The PB came over to check on the shell and convinced the bobcat guy, Victor, to come fill the crater on Friday after seeing how big it was. They pulled the plugs on the pool, allowing ground water to enter from the drains (otherwise it could theoretically "float") and shut off the de-watering pump. It is really nice not to have to listen to that darned pump all night long.

Next up is plumbing & equipment or coping & tile, or something like that. Panic sets in as I realize that I'm still not sure which tile I like. I know that the Shellock Tan is our choice for coping and pavers, so I lugged around the full-size sample paver that the PB gave me to compare with my tile choices. (I weighed it - that tan paver in the middle of these pictures is 18.4 pounds so I mean it when I say LUG) Did I mention that there is extra freight charge on these pavers because they are so dense? This is also supposed to mean easier to keep clean, no algae, and they stay cooler underfoot than concrete pavers.

I did a trip down to the Luv Tile showroom in Sarasota, because they have large samples of all the tiles that I'm interested in, and naturally I'm interested in tiles with "extreme shade variation". In general, this means that I only like about 1/2 of the tiles in each lot, because the other 1/2 are too brown or too plain or too something unacceptable.

I still like the Earthview Blue, which is very glossy to overcome looking too "stoney" (hope that makes sense, but if it doesn't, read the blog description at the top again - no rocks or stone, please). But I look at the gorgeous floor in the showroom, which is 18" Bicio Papao Nero - the website picture does not do it justice - it's a shiny black with rough colorful glazed texturing.

So I look at the Bicio Papao Blue, and I remember that I liked the samples that the pool designer had. But, I didn't like the 1/4 of the samples that were very flat & plain, with very little of the texturing, and she couldn't find her blue sample. The blue in the catalog picture looked very ice-blue or gray-blue, so that didn't appeal to me. I should've know how badly the catalog pictures looked, because the showroom samples were very pretty, and I liked the blue background of the flat, plain samples, enough that I could probably live with it (such as the middle one in the top row pictured).

The only thing that I don't have is the water color, which depends on the Pebble finish that I choose, the lighting, position of the sun, shadows, etc. Will be checking out actually pools with the designer soon.