The Pool

We are landscaping our backyard and we have put in a pool. This has been a long project since we began it back in March/April. We basically designed it and then we subcontracted most everything out and did a lot of the work ourselves. In an effort to save another 5-7,000$ we decided to tile the pool ourselves. We have done a lot of tile in our previous houses and felt we could handle this. Well this has really been a challenge, I appreciate the price quoted by the tile layers now much more. I don't think I would have laid it for that! The fact that the surface we are laying the tile on is vertical and you start at the bottom row of the water line, so basically the tile is floating and you have to create the bottom edge with bender board or something similar to support your tile. Then to make it harder we are using a patterned tile at the waterline so if it isn't laid just perfect all the way around it will show when the water, which is self leveling, is at different areas on the patterned tile. This introduced us to a new tool for us called a water level. This is basically a piece of clear tubing that you fill with water. You put the water line in the tube at the level you want and where the water line is in the other side of the tube is means its level. Its hard to explain but it works great, I love it. Then we have all these curves, and square flat tiles don't round corners well! Add to that the fact that half of the pool is above our heads so its out of our reach and so we have had to have ladders and boards, home made scaffolding, for working in the deep end. We also raised our pool out of the ground to prevent Jennifer from accidentally falling in with her wheelchair. This created another outside surface for us to tile. My mom just doesn't understand why when she calls we are still tiling! I mean you only had to lay tile at the water line after all! Thank you God for my husbands endless patience and the fact that he loves doing tile!