Measuring

I think it really does get deeper at high tide. This is looking pretty deep to me. I need to check at low tide, if I can remember to look and compare pictures. But it's time to measure all the steps and benches to see how crazy the marker tiles will be. Note: Our rescue dog, Sophie, hates tape measures. It's something about that metallic sounds they make. All the pool workers have been warned about this and she has to be locked inside when they are using them. You can imagine how many guys were using tape measures when they were framing. Sophie was barking her head off.

Here's how my measurements came out near the edge of each area:
.....Entry steps: 1st top tiny sunshelf - 8'8"
.....2nd step - 9'2" plus bench 7'6" = 16'8" total
.....3rd step - 11'6"
.....Swimout at deep end - 5'10"
.....Right spa step - 2'11" plus swimout 7'4" = 10'3" total
.....Left spa step - 2'11" plus swimout 7'1" = 10' total
.....Spa bench - 2 x 1'4" width plus 12'6" around = 15'2" total (roughly)
.....Grand total: 42'8" step & bench markers, plus 38-40' swim lane

Hope I did all the math right! I realize that the step & bench markers do not necessarily have to match the swim lane markers. If I went cheapo on the swim lane, since it's 3.5' to 6.5' deep underwater, and splurged a bit on the much shallower steps, I'm not sure would look really bad. Or maybe it would look like I was trying to do it on the cheap. Hmmm.

Now, here's the interesting thing I noticed while I was out there checking things out. Take a look at the left side of the spa (from the house) which is along the thicker pool beam wall. The odd triangle there is completely filled in with shotcrete. This was a discussion item while they were shooting, and I was pretty sure I heard them say that they were going to completely fill those two weird angled spots.

But here's the right side of the spa, along the fence line. That wall was built at a 90 degree angle around the step, and by design, it should've been a 45 degree angle (before the spa was placed there). But that angle would've made the step oddly shaped. Either way, it makes an awkward gap, and I thought it was going to be filled in flush with that side wall of the spa. The difference will be that the left side will be raised and surrounded by coping, and the right side will be ground level pavers, which match the coping. The missing part of the equation is where the steps are planned for this side of the pool. Perhaps this is part of those steps. Need to ask PB about this.

Tile, continued (#4)

After our pool survey on Friday, the designer and I went back to the office to regroup. I just need to check with hubby, but I'm pretty sure we'll be getting the PebbleSheen Aqua Blue with the Shimmering Sea pool finish and the Luv Earthview Blue 6" tiles for the waterline. We might use some of the 4-section mosaic pieces to pattern the spa a little bit, but I haven't quite figured out how much spa will be exposed for tiling, so that can be decided later.
I'm still trying to like a step marker. I love Lightstreams, but they are very expensive at something like $20-30 per linear foot. Artistry in Mosaics has a new by-the-foot product with starfish, sand dollars, and scallops in navy blue for about $10 per linear foot. I really need to go out there with a tape measure and figure out exactly how many feet I'm dealing with. The glass tile generally runs under $20/sqft, but each 12x12 sheet will give me 4-6 linear feet depending on whether I go 2 or 3 tiles width. The designer will check with PebbleTec to see if they'll run a deal on their new tiles, but I'm not sure how much I like their tile products. I see later that they have a Gemz pool tile collection that is similar to the Lightstreams, so I'll have to find out if those are budget-breakers as well. Still open to possibilities.

When the PB showed up at the office, he remembered another similar surplus glass tile that they had in the back storage, and brought out a very nice multiple-blue iridescent glass tile sheet with some copper-like highlights. It's darker than the previous glass tile sheet, and is also plentiful. I think that one will work nicely, but I'm going to keep asking around. So here is a picture of the Artistic Pavers Shellock Tan that will be used for the coping, the Luv Tile Earthview Blue for waterline tile, the PebbleSheen Aqua Blue for the the pool finish (Shimmering Sea to be added), and the no-name surplus glass tile for step markers and swim lane, all taken mid-day with the good camera, roughly in position on the spa. And the good news is that after several hours in the direct sun, the paver is just warm, not hot, as advertised. I went next door and stood on the neighbor's red concrete pavers, and they were maybe just a bit warmer, or it was in my imagination. Who knows?

Meanwhile, back at the house, the bobcat guy, Victor, was filling in the giant crater end of the pool. Much better. The ground water has been filling in the entire deep end, to about a foot deep, maybe. It seemed to come in at high tide, but doesn't seem to go back out at low tide. I'll need to keep a closer eye on that to see if it's in my imagination or what. It's nice having the giant mound of dirt on the side of the house all leveled out, and the concrete-tie rod "sculpture" that has been decorating the front yard for the past week is finally gone.
We do have quite a bit of repair work to do. The other night, I could hear gurgling water in the front yard and realized that the neighbor's sprinkler line was busted and running down the street. The pool guys had capped off both ends, but didn't have an elbow and connectors to fix it. We weren't sure we wanted it fixed anyway, not being sure if any more heavy equipment was going to run down the side yard. The only thing we can think of is something to carry those heavy pavers, which run something like 2800# per pallet. But the PB reassures me that the machine that can carry those is too wide to fit along the side yard anyway, so the paver guys will have to dolly those from the front yard to the back yard by hand.

Saturday morning, my hubby and I were trying to sleep in a bit (or a lot) but we could hear digging sounds in the backyard. Hmmm? Sure enough, the tile guy was out there prepping the shell for his work - digging a little trench around the outside of the shell, digging big holes for the two skimmers, and even better, grinding down all the nails that have been sticking dangerously out of the shotcrete. He also bent a lot of the rebar back and buried it, which he says the electrician won't appreciate, but it's nice having them out of the way.

It's sure nice to have even just that tiny bit of color in the pool. The gray is pretty boring. It was about 78 degrees today, so I'm looking longingly at the neighbors' pools on both sides. Beautiful blue water, so inviting. I'm so ready to swim now, and I honestly have no idea when the pool will be done. Everyone keeps asking me and I hadn't bothered to ask. I must be crazy.

Tiles and Pebbles and Coping ....... Oh My! (#3)

So I stopped by the PB office to drop off a big check (2nd installment due when shell complete) and pick up the tile sample that came in - the MasterTile Desert Canyon Rainbow Green (I hope this link works, but their website is not very friendly.) It's very pastel with less green than I imagined (and hoped). Since I was there, I took a few minutes to browse around the samples and start looking for the two tiles I liked from yesterday, just to see the variation. Couldn't find the Bicio Papao Blue, except a single tile on a giant board from another company, and that sample has a weird green streak in it. So the office guy, Drew, called the designer to find the Luv Tile sample, but it was never there, of course, because I had forgotten about last week, when I had nixed that series tile based on the other colors because of the plain, flat ones.
It turns out that Erin was 5 minutes away on her way to the office, so I waited and we started talking tile choices again, and she told me that after thinking about it, she really likes the Luv Earthview Blue for our pool, too. She pulled out those same glass tile sheets for step markers and the swim lane, but I'm still not crazy about them (See "Scraping" post for the first look at these). I'm pretty sure I want something more iridescent, and these tiles only have little bronze streaks in just a few of the dark gray and white pieces.
Bottom line is that I've just got to see what it looks like underwater with the pebble color, which I'm leaning toward PebbleTec Blue Lagoon. So she makes a phone call and we're off! (Note: I was leaning this way because of this posting on the GardenWeb Pools & Spas forum that pictured a perfect pool.)

I thought I was decided on Blue Lagoon, but wanted to see the "Shimmering Sea" abalone shell additive, but when we got to the pool, well, it just wasn't all that blue, in my opinion. Uh oh. This isn't what I was hoping for at all. I still detect a hint of green, and I don't think it's being influenced by the large tiled sunshelf. The abalone sparkles are barely visible and certainly not noticeable with the water rippling (windy day plus fountain plus wall squirters going). And scraping my foot on a step, the PebbleTec seemed rougher than I remembered (it has bigger stones in it) but it definitely has that pebbly look that the hubby likes. Hmmm. Not all that excited about it, but we take pictures of the various tiles up against the water (and some submerged in the water) just to see what they all look like.

As we drove back to the office, I talked to Erin about our original PebbleTec Blue Lagoon vs. PebbleSheen Aqua Blue dilemma, and she realized that she did another pool nearby using PebbleSheen Aqua Blue with the Shimmering Sea, so a few phone calls later, we were on our way. One look at the pool, and that's BLUE. Gorgeous. It's perfect - love it.
I know pictures are tough because of lighting and camera and monitors and just too many factors to truly compare. Since I hadn't planned this trip at all, I only had my cell phone camera handy. But these pictures were taken within 30 minutes of each other and at approximately the same angle off the late morning sun. The designer was just happy because I had an immediate positive reaction to the color.

Erin held up the various tiles that we had brought along to see how they would look against the water, and they all looked pretty good to me. The coping on this pool was a similar neutral to the Shellock Tan coping that we'll be using. Unfortunately, the position of the sun put almost all the waterline tile in shadow under the coping, except for the sunshelf end, where the pool color is much lighter, of course.

I realize that these camera-phone pictures are pretty bad (perhaps I should've wiped off the lens?), but you get the idea. The first tile pictured is the MasterTile Desert Canyon series Rainbow Green tile, which looks very neutral because of the pastel coloring. The second tile is the Luv Tile Earthview Green, which is my top pick at the moment.

Since the Bicio Papao was on a giant sample board, we couldn't exactly dunk it, so that picture shows the tile near the water. (Keep in mind that the waterline tile will be 1/2 submerged all the time.) It's the blue one in the middle of the bottom row - you can just see that weird green vertical streak in the middle of it (if you look at the samples in the previous post, none have anything like this). These shallow-end & step pictures are showing up greener on my monitor than reality - I'm blaming the camera-phone for the distortion.

But I took a close up near the first step anyway, for the current top pick Earthview Blue, and I think I really like the deeper blue. I like that the brown-gold accents aren't really streaky because streaky tiles seem to end up looking like mis-matched stripes when they're stacked on the spa. BTW, that's one of the deciding factors in this, because the waterline tile is only 6" high around most of the pool, it will be stacked higher around the spa, and the patterned tiles end up looking like stripes when they are stacked. It'd be nice if some of the patterned tile collections had matching solids, but most don't, so if there's a spa involved, you'll end up with stripes.
It looks like this pool is using the MasterTile Rocky Stream series Light Blue in 3"x3" format (which I was warned against). So I can tell that the water is about 1/2" low. This is one of the series that I liked, and came in a pretty mosaic pattern with "solid" matching tiles in 3x3 or 6x6 formats, but I personally didn't want the mossy green that was in it.

On a side note, the chunk of granite that they found for the spillover is gorgeous. In the picture, it looks like a reflection from the sun, but that bright blue spot is a beautiful opalescent streak in the rock, and there are smaller streaks that didn't show from this angle. It's truly magnificent, and I don't even like granite, normally.

Next test is for the step markers and swim lane line. We had brought along a strip of the grayish glass tile (that I didn't particularly care for) and a sample of the new PebbleTec Finishing Touches Geometric Sky Tile to see how it looked underwater. Keep in mind that the swim lane is going to be as deep as 6 1/2' under, although I'll mostly be looking at it underwater with goggles on, not from above the surface of the water.

But we lay both samples on the first step to see how they look. In my pool, this is how it would look on the tiny sunshelf on the entry steps, and the two small steps on either side of the spa. And then we lay the tiles on the second step to see how that looks, keeping in mind that "2nd step" is also equivalent to the bench, the main swimout, the spa bench and the two spa swimouts.

Reaching down to the third step is up to my shoulder, so I got my shirtsleeve wet getting these in. We are now thinking about what happens when the glue holding the tiles onto the mesh starts to give out. And one of the Sky tiles does fall off and I almost have to dip my shoulder in to get it out. But my swim line is even deeper and I tossed the no-name strip in, hoping it might land right-side up (not sure if it did).

The gray and white tiles are gone, looking down from above the surface of the rippling water. Hmmm. Look right in the middle of that picture, and you can just make out a couple of royal-bluish spots. That's the tile strip. Not thrilled, but the price is right. (Turns out they have boxes of this stuff in their storage room left over from another project, so they will unload it at a very reasonable price, wink wink.) Good thing the net is handy so we can scoop the tile strip out. I think we got all of them.

No more pictures until I get a real camera. Check back tomorrow for the rest of the Friday adventure.