Shasta is it a spooned osteospermum. squirl girl here is pics of the stock. as for the crack soil I just got lucky and we amended the soil the correct way right off the bat. We just added some manure (bagged from the store) and some more garden soil and tilled it in. The plants love it. Along with the pansey's there is volunteer zinnia so I am guessing that the zinnias REALLY love this soil. In the planter and a few left over in a jug Paula

You've been busy!! Bet the kids in your area love all your decor for Halloween, what fun for them. Those witches in last photo are similar to my Pumpkin Geese. I love Terry's Village catalogs, neat stuff and good prices. You got some cute things. I would love some of the white ceramic pumpkins, but don't know when or if I can get to a Target anytime soon. Darn. I'm "oranged" out here, especially for someone who doesn't normally do orange in the first place. LOL hugs, Karen

Thanks! Geez, i couldn't even tell you how many hours. Started laying it out in early June. Its now Oct...lol. Worked on it mostly weekends and nights after work. Very little help. Kevin....got em at lowes. About $8.50 each. Glued em on. I had to stain the PT wood part of them to match the IPE. Managed to get them pretty close in color so that when I stain/seal the entire deck it should all look similar.

Thanks for all the compliments... cdavmd: Paver brand is Flagstone Pavers. White based concrete, in cream/beige/charcoal. We used Orlando Brick Pavers in Orlanfo, FL. We went with American Pavers coping since their cream color looked nicer than the Flagstone Paver light color (I forget the color name). lmhall2000: I believe the wattage of the IntelliBrites is 75W... that is what I recall seeing on the box. The datasheet on the Pentair site states "IntelliBrite pool lights need only 37 watts to create the same light output as traditional incandescent and halogen pool lights do at 161 wattsmore than 75% less!" So a 75W LED (when displaying white light) is equivilent to a 300W bulb. Colors are less brite. We were originally going to put a spa LED on the shallow end, but received advice to put a full size pool light instead. Glad we did. But to make a full size light fit, we had to have a minimum of 3'-3" depth... PB did the extra depth for free (3' was standard). The first 8' of the shallow end is pretty level because of the stairs are 8'. At the deep end, the floor is essentially level for about 10' out from spa wall. The pool is 40', so subtracting the 8' and 10', the floor drops from 3'-3" to 7' over a span of 22'. If you look at my Progess Pics (see link above), you can get a feel for the slope. The slope feels pronounced for me, but I don't mind it. We would have gone with 3'-6" but did not want to pay the extra costs... the deeper you go at the shallow end, the more steps you need... and that is the extra cost. I personally think 4' is too deep at the shallow end if you have small kids. As for cost, if I subtract off the heat pump and spa, then our cost was approx. $37K. Fence was $5K on top of that. That's Orlando pricing. Concrete coping ran about $15 per LF, and pavers ran about $4.50 to $5.00 per SF. Total cost of my pavers/coping was approx. $8300. However, the price of stamped concrete ranged from $9.50 to $15 per SF. terrier96: Technically, the deep end is 7'3", but I say 7'. Our last pool was 5' deep (very common in FL with the high water table). Most PBs include a standard depth of 5'. The additional cost to go from 5' to 7' was $700. But the cost to go from 5' to 8' was $1500. We were just not willing to pay extra for 8' because we thought we did not need it. The 7'3" is deep enough for shallow diving... I can dive in across the width of the pool. We don't dive, and did not want a pool deep enough for proper diving (most residentail pools built with diving boards are not safe enough for diving anyway). We did want a pool long enough for laps, and 40' is good for us. One reason we went with a 20 x 40 was cost. In FL, folks can build a basic 400 SF pool (no coping and no decking) for X dollars, or build an 800 SF pool for 20% to 25% more. We had the room, so spending an extra 20% to 25% to double the pool area was an easy decision. We had 5 folks in the pool on the 4th, with rafts... all in the shallow end and we were not cramped. -Gorilla