In reply to Lee675's comment above that "Kohler's older Ingenium flush was much better, even if it doesn't seem to do well in lab-test settings. In real life - I've used plenty of these - they work very well and never leave anything stuck to the sides of the bowl...." OH, do I beg to differ with you! We installed a Portrait toilet in our powder room 20 yrs ago when we built our home & it's the worst flushing toilet I've ever cleaned! Not only does stuff get stuck on the front end of the bowl (yuck!) but hardly any water enters all around the rim while flushing. We can't replace it as we have the matching pedestal & both are in black - very expensive color so we're stuck. I keep clorox clean-ups & rubber gloves handy in that bathroom now, as I refuse to use a toilet brush on what gets stuck - just too disgusting. None of our other 4 bathroom have problems with flushing & all toilets were installed at same time. It's got to be the design of the bowl & flushing system. My hubby is a P&H contractor, well-respected in our "tony" town, so the toilet was installed properly. It's just hopeless & I dread it when someone uses it for more than a simple peeing!

I can personally vouch that a Maytag A906 top load washer in the house I grew up in, made circa 1969, was still going strong when my folks moved out of their house five years ago. (for some reason I still have the owner's manual in my file cabinet which is why I know the model number). They built the same basic machine until roughly a decade ago, although their reputation took a deserved beating when they started buying out other companies and rebranding their appliances as Maytags. Then the company nearly failed and the remnants were bought out by Whirlpool and the old, unprofitable Maytag plant in Iowa was shut down. Modern "Maytag" appliances are mostly rebadged Whirlpools. Your old Kenmore was probably made by Whirlpool. Their basic top-loaders were reliable, but performance-wise were lacking IMO. The old ones (up to mid-'80s or thereabouts) were notoriously poor at extracting water in the spin cycle due to low speeds, thus requiring extra time and electricity to dry your clothes. Later models spun slightly faster, but trash your clothes because the agitator posts twists unusually fast in an attempt to make up for not being able to twist much to either side. I had one at my old apartment, and most of my clothes didn't survive being washed in my Whirlpool unscathed. It's especially bad if you have larger or bulkier items, which always got ripped to shreds by the fast-shaking agitator. Also, it doesn't spin when the water drains, so the gunk floating atop the water gets re-deposited on your clothes. Speed Queen made (and still makes) good, basic, reliable machines, which is why it's the most popular brand in laundromats. In stark contrast to Whirlpool's washers, they have a slow-moving agitator that still cleans well whilst being gentle on clothes because it can twist in a 210-degree arc. Many Speed Queens have durable stainless-steel tubs. Until the late '90s, Raytheon owned both Speed Queen and Amana, and the latter were nearly identical to the SQ. After then, Amana changed hands about four times and wound up being one of Whirlpool's low-budget brands. My xgf had a mid-1960s Frigidaire that was terrific, and is still working today. Any Frigidaires made when General Motors owned the company are first rate (that's true of all their appliances, not just washing machines). Unfortunately, they're getting hard to find, being pre-1980. But they're built like tanks, and they do a great job both cleaning and extracting water after it's done. These machines will have a reference to GM on the control panel and have porcelain tubs. Post-GM Frigidaire top-loaders, though, are awful, as are other brands that got bought out by the (no longer extant) White Consolidated Industries (White-Westinghouse, Kelvinator, and some machines made for other companies). These can be identified by white plastic tubs, which are usually scuffed by now. GE (and their low-end subsidiary Hotpoint) was fairly reliable through the mid-90s, though not everyone loves the filter you need to remove and replace each time you fill or unload the washer. That design is good if you have old or problematic plumbing though. In the mid-90s, they ditched the filter and went to larger plastic tubs (or stainless steel on the high-end models) instead of porcelain. These are less reliable than the older ones in my experience, but still reasonably good. The good news is that old top-load washers are all but given away on Craigslist every day. You may find a free one; they rarely go for more than $150 if they're more than 10 years old. Whirlpool and Whirlpool-manufactured Kenmores seem to be the most common, followed by Maytag and GE. Fisher & Paykel not common enough for me to have reliability info. Their machines wash well and have a high spin speed. So basically, old genuine Maytags and Speed Queens probably the best combination of common, cheap,and reliable. Really old Frigidaires are best if you can find one. Whirlpool/Kenmore are reliable but mediocre performers (avoid the newer "Calypso" models that don't have agitator posts - they're lemons). Avoid post-GM Frigidaires (with plastic tubs) or White-Westinghouse. Newer high-efficiency top-loaders without agitator posts made by LG, Samsung, or Whirlpool/Maytag probably still too expensive used, and long-term reliability as yet undetermined, but I'd strongly consider one if I found one for a good price. They have huge capacity and some of them can heat their own water, and they usually have high spin speeds for faster drying. I'm probably forgetting some brands - i'm sure someone will chime in here; there are some seriously knowledgeable old-appliance experts here, and I don't count myself amongst them.

Thanks for the responses...great, great responses! joanneswimsct, you make a great point about the diving well cutting into your shallow area. A decent-sized shallow area is important to us, even though we plan on a tanning shelf; I'd love for the kids to at least be able to play a little water basketball at some point (volleyball would be ideal, but don't know if we can make the shallow area big enough AND get a diving well, too). I think, as I consider the family growing, that a diving area is probably going to be a must to keep the kids at my house (which is my ultimate goal in installing this pool, anyway). and renovxpt, thanks for the tips. I'm thinking we'll do flagstone coping (not slick, I believe), and I'm *hoping* the skins pattern, sans sealer, will be rough enough. Not only do I not want lawsuits, I more importantly don't want one of the kiddos injured. I'd never forgive myself if I went with aesthetics over safety! Good advice. And you make a good point about the PB that says "no problem" to salt...I was surprised; I was also surprised he suggested using an ozonator with the salt system (is there a point to that?). partypond, we are in the DFW area, too--haven't started looking into insurance companies yet (didn't even think about the fact they may NOT insure some of these items!), so it's good to hear it's not an issue around here. And thanks for that point about a jump rock; I've been wondering what would be safer, and that is SO true that they could hit their head on the hard rock (plus, I wouldn't put it past them to be trying flips off the thing, anyway). Clearly, I've got a lot to learn. This forum is a huge help!

This is a fascinating subtopic and would make a great topic on it's own. I am the worst category - I have poor visualization and spatial skills BUT I care a LOT about my space and am one of those people who really find therapy in an environment that is aesthetically pleasing. (It would be so much easier if I just didn't care) As you can imagine this makes picking a paint color crazy-making. Well, I can see it in my head, but it doesn't transfer to reality - and because I have zero artistic skill (have me draw next to a kindergartner student and have fun guessing who drew what), it's VERY difficult for me to translate/communicate what I see in my head for others. This is why I like to find inspiration pics that are pretty much exactly what I want. I trust my taste, but not my ability to visualize it in my head and make it translate to reality. (Unfortunately, I haven't found such a pic for the kitchen after looking at 3 M pics, so that is unsettling for me.) And, now that pal mentions it, it's probably difficult for me to totally trust someone who CAN do it, partially because I know I haven't been able to adequately relay what is actually in my head so how could they really translate it for me? When I was a new home owner, I brought a chair home after going to stare at it for weeks. The way I visualized it, it was PERFECT in my home. When they delivered it, it was way over-sized for the scale of the room and had to go right back. That's maybe when I really realized this is a problem for me and I was in my 30's. I try to only buy furniture that can be returned upon delivery, which gets trickier as time goes on! LOL But, I've learned to use free room design software like you can find on West Elm and that really helps. In fact, I used that to furnish my new office at work last year. The space was tricky in that it is small and needs to function as a group space as well as individual meetings and accommodate people of different sizes and physical capabilities. But, it also needs to serve as my office and store my books/paperwork, give me a place to write, etc. I did so well with it I am episodically asked if I hired a designer. Come a long way, baby? I'd love to study this more, actually. While my visualization/spatial skills are poor and I can't draw, I have considerable natural propensity for music and played for years and years. In the world of relaxation strategies, different people tend to respond to different techniques - some love listening to sound or a voice coaching them through, others respond better to visualization or staring at objects, etc. And the idea that people are raising here that we can build our spatial abilities through exercise, puzzles, practice, training, exposure is very interesting. In the meanwhile, I have this gutted empty space and it is not accompanied by a gut sense of how the space will feel or function with stuff back in it... and it's a tad unnerving, now that I pause to think about it.