My yard looks like a bomb went off. I am sure it is not abnormal but WOW! what a mess. The plumbing seems to be going well. Our PB said he expects the plumbing work to be done tomorrow. The gas line is also going in tomorrow.

As with so many other things in life, I love experiencing the pool build with my boys. My oldest and I walk around the mess each afternoon to see what they did that day. We try to follow where the pipes are going and figure out what they are for.

My PB also said he promises that the project will be done in 2 1/2 weeks. I would love to see him follow through on that promise. We'll see. Seems like a lot of work to do in that amount of time.

We are working on picking the decking materials. We were going to use Techo Bloc Athena. I really like Techo Bloc Inca and I am trying to figure out the best way to use Inca in some areas. If anyone has pics of Inca I would love to see them.

We got our whole pool done in 3 1/2 weeks so another 2 1/2 weeks from the gunite stage is definitely doable. Hope they follow through with their promise.

The yard damage unfortunately goes with the territory. I think yard damage gave me more heartburn about our pool project than anything else. We take a lot of pride in our yard, so seeing ruts up to 20" deep (see below pic link) was really depressing! The PB did a great job of smoothing it all out though and the sprinkler line damage was minimal. It's been a few months since our pool was completed and the grass has covered about 30% of the yard "scars" already. I think by the end of summer it'll all be filled in and will be a distant memory. So just do what you can to ignore it, it'll be beautiful again in the near future :-)

Here is a link that might be useful:

Yikes, tres! Those are some trenches!

I'm assuming that's your neighbor behind you in the picture? That house looks remarkably like mine!

Hi,

Hope your PB is rushing your job along... It really looks great so far .... waiting is the worst...

Just thought I'd mention that our backyard trees look almost identical... We could even be neighbors ..LOL
Do you have any clue what the lower trees that grow the white fragrant flowers are? Are you near Great Adventure ?

Mommyniki, 3 1/2 weeks? That is so amazing.

Moocat, We are more than an hour NW from Great Adventure. I have been there, of course. Regarding the white flowers, I think we have a dogwood mixed in with all the trees in the back.

Our plumbing and equipment are all in. Fortunately, our yard doesn't look too bad or maybe I am just getting used to it. We are just waiting for an inspection of the autofill water line and then the trenches can be closed.

The install of the coping and the stacked stone on the raised bond beam was supposed to start today but was postponed. We are hoping for tomorrow.

Your yard looks great compared to mine, but we got a ton of rain too. I had a muddy mess. At least yours looks dry!

I love the shape of the pool!

I love the large pool. I keep worrying ours is too small, but it is the biggest we could fit in the space we have available! I cannot wait.
How did you post your pictures directly in the thread?

Quote: "Yikes, tres! Those are some trenches!
I'm assuming that's your neighbor behind you in the picture? That house looks remarkably like mine!"

I know, it's horrible isn't it? Boy did it give me heartburn looking at that for 2 months! The picture is actually on the side of our house looking towards the front of our lot, so that's the house across the street from us. So what is in that picture is our front yard and is only about 10% of the damage. That "path" ran from the front all the way to the back fence and over to the pool area in a giant loop. That's wild that the neighbors' house looks like yours! I have to say the builders around here were good about building unique houses, there are no 2 that are alike.

Momof3littleboys, that's a great pic that really shows off the interesting shape of your pool! That's going to be so nice! Where is the cabana going to go?

Our cabana will go in front of the equipment pad. The cabana is 5 sided and we plan on attaching pergolas to 2 sides so one will go along the back end of the pool and one will go along the side.

Our stone came yesterday but no work was done. We expect them today. I just hope they show up.

Today is day 78 of our pool build. That might not be bad if we didn't expect the whole project to be done in 6 weeks and it wasn't going to be 97 degrees today. Live and learn!

Momof3,
I hope that all is well and PB is back on the job again. It can be soooo frustrating! But you are so close to completion! I also understand the yard devastation, after everything was complete though, the yard didn't look too bad. We have ruts on our side yard, but not to the degree that Tres had. But unfortunately, sprinkler people showed up yesterday and pulled all of our newly laid sod and our landscaping has been roughed up. Not happy at all since the owner of the company had told me to go ahead and get the sod laid and the landscaping done and they would work around it all. Right, they worked on it all!!!!! I wanted to cry when I walked outside last night! But we did get lots of compliments at our party the day before...
Soon, it won't matter...

The stone crew is here to start the stone! Yay! Gotta love progress.

I'll post pics as soon as there is something to show.

It has been a while since I posted progress. The stone crew took longer than expected. The stacked stone on the raised bond beam is complete. The coping is all cut but still needs to be attached to the pool and the bullnose needs to be cleaned up. The tile also needs be installed. We thought the paver crew would be coming this week to start the grading for the hardscaping but that changed. We are not sure when they are starting. We are concerned because we have stalled between phases in the past and with our kids out of school we are anxious to get the project completed. We signed our pool contract in November so we could be swimming the whole season. That definitely didn't work out as we had hoped.

Here are some pictures of the stone work. The pictures look a little odd because my son was just hosing down the stone. It is wet in some areas and dry in others. The colors really change when the stone is wet. The colors are very pretty.

Here is a link that might be useful: Our Pool Build

Oh! I love your coping stone! May I ask what kind/color it is? I feel like Jim Carrey in The Truman Show when he is going through all the magazines putting together the picture of the girl "he lost"! I am looking at everyones pools and picking out all my colors, stones and tiles to put together the perfect pool for my family. Everyone says it is so overwhelming walking into the tile place to choose from the thousands available. I am using everyones experience and expertise to help me because I am "design challenged". Ha ha

Lala,

Thanks for the compliment! I know exactly what you are going through. I was, and still am, exactly the same way. I found this board to be an invaluable resource as we were designing our pool. Though I know it cost us money because I would see things here and have to have it. Our coping stone is Tennessee Crab Orchard.

Keep looking through all the old build threads. There are so many beautiful pools out there and there are so many people on this board with great ideas and great advice.

Where are you located?

Good luck!

We are in the Texas Gulf Coast area. Thanks for the great advice. I am totally loving this forum and am so thankful to have found it. I have a feeling that after the pool is done I'll be hanging around the Landscaping forum alot too!

We have been frustrated with our pool builder for quite a while and today I boiled over. I don't want to bore you with the details on how poorly our project has been handled to date but suffice it to say that today I had enough. I had been doing a good job of keeping my cool with them until the paver contractor who was assigned to our job (finally) told me we should be swimming in 3 weeks.

First we were told the pool would be done in early May and since May we have been told that the project will be done in 2-3 weeks. To hear that again today was more than I could take. I am so upset by how frustrating this project has been and I am disappointed that we are not getting to enjoy the pool this summer.

I told our PB that I am at the end of my rope and all I asked of him is that they get something done this week. My PB acknowledged that things have not gone well for us AND no one will be working on our project this week. I could scream. Enough is enough.

That is no doubt very frustrating, especially considering how close you are to being done with it. We signed in November and the pool was done by March 1st and that seemed like forever! I can't imagine going through what you have. I hope they keep their latest promise and that you are swimming before the month is out! Good luck!

CB was really good to us, sorry to hear about your troubles.
The whole process is an emotional roller coaster. Our dig was in Dec 2006 and the pool itself was pastered the end of May 2007. Hope it works out for you, who are you talking to at CB?

I know exactly how you feel, the frustration can make you absolutely scream! All I can say is hang in there, all things eventually pass.......you've seen my previous threads.....it all slowly goes into the memory closet. Just keep pushing the PB....be a thorn in his side so that HE wants to get you done.

tresw and cdavmd, Thanks so much for your support. I really appreciate it. I hope at some point during this summer our pool will be finished and as nice as both of yours. We have tried to push and we have tried to plead. You should see the e-mails I have sent them over the last few months begging them to finish our pool. We don't know what else to try.

thejimbar, Your posts last year are one of the reasons we decided to give your builder a call. Unfortunately, our experience has not been the same as yours. The pool design they came up with was very nice. Their price was up and above what we wanted to pay and higher than what other builders were quoting so I thought we were done with them. My husband had a good feeling about them so we signed on. We can take an emotional roller coaster. This is beyond that. There were so many times that I was going to post to ask you your secret in dealing with them. We expected that our build would go similar to yours. We signed in early November and were told that they would do the shell last winter and then finish it up in early spring. As you can see from this thread that is not what happened. I am curious, did you have a project manager assigned to your build?

So here we are in July (8 months since we signed our pool contract) and the best case is that we are weeks from water. Unfortunately, we are now in the worst case category. We are not going to do any work on the pool or hardscaping while we address some issues. I don't know the extent of some of the issues yet so I will provide more details later. It looks like getting this all cleaned up and finished is going to cost us more than we expected.

Now it looks like we will join a swim club and I will sign my kids up for some summer camps to keep them busy.

I hope everyone has a Happy 4th.

I dealt directly with Mark the owner and again, the whole experience was a really smooth one. We just hit it off real well. I hope it all works out for you.

We were also dealing directly with Mark.

Who was your pool builder? And is it finished?

rksajs, I am reluctant to put my pool builders name all over the place because it is not my intention to destroy anyone's reputation or negatively impact the livelihood of the PB's employees. We started this thread to document our build because we have really enjoyed reading about other people's builds and have really tried to keep this thread positive. We never expected our build would go this way. As of right now, our pool builder has acknowledged that our build has not gone well and we have an amicable agreement for how we will proceed and are assuming he will honor that agreement.

Our pool is not finished. We need to complete the coping and stonework, equipment, plumbing, electrical, plaster, decking, and retaining walls. We did not contract with our PB to do the fencing, landscaping, and lighting. We always planned on dealing with those items on our own.

Saw you note in the thread I posted on our pool (Pool Essentially completed) and sorry to see all the problems you've had but if you're getting near plaster, maybe there is an end in sight! We love the Black Pearl on our pool so far, we have a lot of trees and trying to help keep the heat up a bit, we're at 81 now, has been as high as 84. We had wanted to go with a dark pool on the house we had in Texas but our PB was smart enough to tell us that might be a bad idea with the sun and heat there! Good luck the rest of the way.

Thanks for the response, I was looking at a similar pool and started to use a company in Northern NJ, I have stopped the project before they have gone too far. I have concerns about the company. Lets just say the owners name rymes with Ryan... Good luck with your pool, I'm sure next summer you will be telling the story of this project to fiends while relaxing poolside.

rksajs, I am so sorry to hear about your issues. Annoying, isn't it? I hope your family is taking it well. Mine is so bummed out. Everyone is mourning the loss of their 2008 pool dream. Like you said, there is always next summer.

momo3....
GIRL! Do I EVER share your misery!!!!!! I have not yet boiled over, but I am so close. My husband has begged me to keep my cool (Oh sure, but I'm the one looking out the window at a disaster area a hundred times a day!) but I'm just beyond shocked, beyond dismayed. I'm furious. If I did business the way these guys do, I'd be fired in a week. That's the absolute truth. But as with many outfits in the service industry, there is no recourse, no "boss" to complain to, no "corporate" customer service to address your issues. Just you and your PB, when he decides to return your tearful phone calls.
Our PB is also doing our decking/landscaping. That was all supposed to be done before the pool was plastered and filled. Since APRIL we have heard story after story as to why the patio and pool deck are not being done....so my PB went ahead and pebbleteched and filled our pool. It's gorgeous. Really. Except you need combat boots and a tetanus shot to get from my backdoor to the pool edge. It's a nightmare. We've cancelled a graduation party, and now another party that we had scheduled for late July. So yes, we can swim, but it's bizarre and probably unsafe.
I have heard dozens of times on this forum that it's par for the course, so I've bit my tongue. I just can't believe it's been such a stressful and unpleasant experience.
We joined the swim club in June, thank heavens. I know you're somewhere in Jersey -- we extended a long weekend into 10 days at the Jersey shore since I KNEW there wasn't going to be a pool to swim in by July 4th. It was lovely. Nothing can replace the beach!
We'll get it done, I'm sure. Just wanted you to know that you are not the only one. Sometimes it helps!
Best-
dagirlmd

Mom!!!

Okay, you've been too patient..you've been a little too quiet...we feel as though we communicate through email, but I can tell you after dealing with contractors on my own home remodel...emails are laughable..it's really like training horses, some left brained horses aren't going to move until you make it uncomfortable for them...it's time to get creative.

Does he have an office? Is there a place where you can go with your three little boys and bring the office workers some homemade cookies...tell them you sympathize with their job in having to deal with customers who are very eager to swim in this heat! Also tell them that you need to speak with manager...review your agreement so far, tell him it is past the point of frustration and you need hard dates on when the subcontractors are going to be there to complete their portion. It would be IDEAL if you could arrange to be there when he has an appointment with a potential customer...and I don't see why you don't mention this thread to him and how you have not wanted to use his name but that you found him through this source and it's only fair that you protect other families by sharing this experience...if he steps up to the plate and follows through with your agreement then you will be the first to sing his praises and ask him how you'd like him to explain why your project took 3 months longer than you were told.

Emails don't hurt him, emails can easily be unopened, but if you attack this in a cool and calculated approach...he might just put some grease on that squeaky wheel! Please keep us informed and stay with it!
Tara

Mom,
First, your pool design is probably my favorite one on this forum! The tucked away bench seats, the raised beams, the steps, the way the shallow end curves sharply, unseen, to the deep end is awesome.
You say that you still need electrical, tile, plumbing, equipment, decking and retaining walls... wow. It was my experience that these things took longer to get done than getting to the poured shell point.
Take lmhall2000s advice.
BTW, the only thing that I can think of to take so long to get workers out there is that he has to wait to get paid from other jobs to hire folks for yours. Maybe not, but I am ever paranoid after my home build went this way.
Anyhow, I hope it all comes together soon, and I want to see lots of pics on this pool. It is my favorite design.

I am sorry your project is so delayed!! I know you much be very frustrated!

We were lucky, our build took just over a month. Today they come to dump acid in and we cant go in there for 5 days.

I will be checking your progress and praying for it to speed up.
Here is ours now:
{{gwi:2036029}}

Thanks for all the kind responses. I appreciate the support so much.

dagirlmd,
Your pool does look amazing. Congrats on getting that far. I can not believe your pavers are still MIA. Does the PB believe those are the only pavers in the US? Does he say why he hasn't just ordered more so he can get you finished? We considered just finishing the pool and then dealing with the hardscaping later. We need to have a bunch of fill removed and will also need some grading work so we decided against it because we think we would just end up with a very muddy and dusty pool.

lmhall2000,
You are right. I have been too quiet. I should have starting hanging out at their office a while ago. I had never even been there until recently. My husband and I went one day this week and no one was there.

ncrealestateguy, Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Your comments were so nice. It means a lot coming from you since we also love your pool. If I talk to our pool designer I will certainly tell him what you said. He no longer works for our pool builder. Ironically, he left the PB about the same time we did. I would recommend him to a friend in a second. I wish you had posted your design before we atarted. It never even occurred to us to ask for an infinity edge and I love how you integrated your steps and your sunshelf. Maybe next time. LOL! I don't think non-payment is the reason for our project dragging out. I almost wish it was that.

momofthreeboys, Your pool looks beautiful! That was a fast build. Congratulations.

There has been no work done on the pool since July 2nd. We have have been spending our time talking to pool builders, electricians, plasterers, masons, plumbers, and lawyers. We have met some really nice people.

My husband was thinking about letting the PB finish just the pool, but then we had tried to reach him for days with no luck and that brought back one of the reasons why we are where we are. We had an agreement with our pool builder when he pulled his workers off our job. That agreement has been written up by our lawyer and our PB has it. Given that it was exactly what he agreed to, he should sign it but we'll see if he does. If the PB tries to back out of the agreement than I may be driven to spend some time hanging out at his office this week. I have friends who offered to hang out there with me. I guess they wanted our pool done this summer, too! I have tried to be nice but I can't let us get jerked around any more.

After getting quotes we realized we are not going to be able to stay within our original budget (and we thought we were overpaying before :-0). There is a lot left to do and some things that people want to correct. When one person says they don't like how something was done I am skeptical. When 3 different people say it then I can't ignore it.

Hopefully I will have some happy news to share soon. I am still optimistic that there will be a happy ending to this long, drawn our tale.

momof3~

I just wanted to say how sorry I am about your ordeal.. It is amazing how different people's experiences can be with one PB.
A simple example is my first thread here... I had put my PB name and boy did everyone have comments to make... I mean I was just sharing my PB experience, but people felt it necessary to make comments of how bad my choice of PB was... well after the fact I had a great experience...

Honestly, I think there is no sure way to tell what your experience will be... sometimes delays are legit.. sometimes they are not, like in your case..... but just because one person has a good or bad experience.. does not mean yours will be the same..
If I remember correctly.. the PB you used was being tossed around my thread... it was comical... I thought it was the owner or someone close to them trying to annoy me for choosing a PB they didn't like... or just trying to advertise their name... I think I recently saw them recommended as well....
Anyway my point is I am sorry that you've had the experience you've had... I hope that you find someone to take over the job & get it done right...

In the meantime would you like to bring those 3 little boys over for a swim ??? lol My son.. an only child, would love the company !!!

Moocat,

I remember your thread very well. It certainly seemed like some people from my PB were causing the problems. I thought it was so unfair. All you wanted to do was share your build and they felt the need to make ridiculous comments. It was so obvious and in the end they just embarrassed my PB. Where are stret0026 and soccermom97 now?

That big pool is for an only child? WOW! I see some big parties in your future.

Thanks so much for your well wishes.

Quote: "We had an agreement with our pool builder when he pulled his workers off our job."

I think I must have missed an important piece of the story in there somewhere, why did your PB pull off the job? He's just decided to leave you high and dry all of a sudden? It's really infuriating to read stories like this, I can only imagine what it's like to have to live through it! Best wishes to you, hopefully there will be a happy ending. There was for Birdbath, so there's hope for darned near anyone, LOL!

Yes, our PB is no longer working on our pool. I told him, among other things, that this whole situation has been too disruptive and upsetting to my family. He kept breaking his promises and in the best case scenario we had 3 weeks to go (but we were betting that this could easily drag on for the rest of the summer). It should not have been this difficult. He did agree that our build has not gone well and apologized. Apparently he had too much work. Poor guy!

Even though no work has been done since July 2nd, it is a relief to be past that. The subs I have spoken to so far have really been great. I have a friend building a pool and her PB even stopped over and offered to help and gave me some subs that I should call for the work that remains.

Our PB finally signed the contract termination paper today (that was a major headache) so now we can move forward and get the project completed. My goal is to have water the week of August 11th. I just hope it all pans out.

Don't know if you got my direct email to your gmail . . . so just posting to say "Hi" and that I am still trying to sort out my final ideas before hiring a PB. B-T-W . . as I had mentioned, we had once thought of using yours (your ex-)so, I guess we're both still without water. I really feel for you, everything was looking great from your photos and I had hoped to request a visit since my plans were rather similar (shape and material-wise) and I thought I could use the advice of what to do and when, etc. to make things go smoothly. I loved the way your pool shape and stone was looking, but photos never look as good as the real thing. Keep us posted. All the best.

To Momof3 -
What a RELIEF to see your postings - we are using the same PB and could we trade stories on MW and his crew! Sorry Jimbar - but this is the absolute worst experience in our lives right now - they NEVER show up - we spend days looking out the window for trucks, calling the office (no answer) calling MW's cell phone, no answer - going to their offices, no one there....I am not hesitant to post their name and will do so if they don't finish this job soon. Your postings have been very, very helpful and I would welcome your reply. He was here Thurs telling us how ours has been handled badly but he will get people here first thing...of course no one shows up Thurs, or Fri or today...my husband and I (and our kids) are beyond upset. We have given up on trying to work it out - all we get is the same old story from Mark...empty promises. I would never recommend this PB.

Pam1012, I am so sorry to hear that you are having problems. I was hoping that our situation with them was unique because I wouldn't wish that kind of frustration on any family. Thanks for letting me know about your experience. At least I am no longer insulted thinking that we were singled out by them. I guess they are really going through a rough patch. It seems like they had a lot of work so maybe they are experiencing growing pains. I really don't know how they are doing it without G.M. How far along is your build?

I haven't posted in a while because I have been so busy with my unexpected owner build, plus we squeezed in a week at the beach. It has actually gone very well so far. We actually made some enhancements to what we had contracted our PB to do and I think we are going to end up with a much better finished product when it is all done. As I type, the Pebblesheen crew is doing our pool. In the last 3 weeks we got a bunch of estimates and hired:
- a mason to finish the coping, put boulders on the sunshelf, and smooth out the bullnosed coping
- an electrician to do ALL the electrical work (I still can't believe how much work was still needed here and how much it cost)
- a pool company to do all the pool finish work, plumb the sheer descents, and start up the pool
- a hardscaper/landscaper to install the pavers, concrete pads for the cabana and diving board, retaining walls, stairs into our existing boulder wall, firepit, outdoor kitchen, and landscaping. I found such a great guy to do all of this work. He was such an incredible find that we actually are doing more now than we expected to. He reworked his schedule to get us in and his work so far has been amazing. He has been the best person to work with. He worked for 2 days and then we left for a week on vacation and I felt totally comfortable having him continue in our absence. He has made a lot of progress but he still has more than a week of work left.
- a plaster company. We had been planning on doing Hydrazzo since last November but somehow our plans changed in the last 3 weeks. We decided to do Pebblesheen. It was a tough choice between Prism Blue and Ocean Blue. We loved Birdbath's pool so we chose Ocean Blue for the pool and spa. We are doing Desert Gold on the sunshelf. I used pictures of Krisfl's pool to convince my husband using 2 colors would look nice.
- a fence company that will do the install on Tuesday.
- LAST BUT NOT LEAST, A WATER GUY! It gets delivered tomorrow.

I think that covers all of it. It has been crazy (and a little fun) to pull it all together so fast. We never would have considered an owner build but now we know that we could have pulled it off.

I will post pics when we have water and when the project is complete. Thanks for all of the great info and pictures. It was a great help in getting us where we are today.

If anyone in central or western NJ is thinking about doing a owner build, I have found some subs that I would definitely recommend.

Sorry this post is so long. I started typing and it all poured out.

All I can say is WOW . . . with Mom's like Moocat and others designing great pools and you doing all you had to do to take over your build . . . WOW. I've been very impressed as you women have triumphed in doing something great for your families. As I am learning the pool owner contributes so much to what makes your pool project turn out fantastic regardless of what PB you use. Yes, please share info. You go gals!

PAM1012, not my fault here.... My build went as I documented.
Don't know what to tell you.

thejimbar,

You don't need to be defensive. No one is blaming you. That would be ridiculous. You didn't sign our contracts. We just wish that our experience was as great as yours.

I am very fortunate that things have worked out so well in the end. I'm just sorry that we had to miss out on using our pool for most of this summer.

I am curious. Knowing what you know about how 2 of their recent builds have gone, would you recommend them to a friend right now?

Not recommending anyone for anything anymore.....to each his own! Glad u r progressing.

Glad to hear it's all coming together for you momof3. I do wonder if all the problems began after GM's "departure" but consistent lying and not not showing up to the job site and leaving our backyard in shambles have left us no choices and now we are moving on and getting things done our way. Never said it was your fault Jimbar...Just expressing what we are going through, with the same people who you worked with...with very different results..consider yourself very lucky. We have learned from several contractors that our PB is well known for taking on way too much, he's short staffed and has several cases against him for lack of finishing the job, he subs everything out despite his website claiming "no subs"...so, we wait on subs to finish other jobs to get to us and are lied to consistently - he blames everyone else and keeps blaming GM (he was in sales he's not a builder) it shows MW's inexperience and immaturity as a business man - he screws people, plain and simple. These delays will cost him in the end, as you can see from this forum (and there are others where I have read about CB) his reputation is exactly what we are going through so I am happy for those few who can claim a a good experience, there aren't many of you jimbar. ..thanks for your time and input.

Any updates? Katherine

Just wondering if you ever finished your pool? I looked for finished product pics but couldn't find any. We moved into a new house this summer and before that I was following the progress of your pool. I really love the shape of it. Now that we are settled and looking at PBs, I wanted to see how yours turned out and couldn't find it. I would love to see it. If you posted them somewhere else, just point me in the right direction.

Yes, our pool is finished. YAY! We have had water since August 10th. We spent the last few weeks getting the hardscaping and landscaping completed. Everything is done except the top of our firepit, the counters of our outdoor kitchen, closing the construction access in our fence, and staining our existing deck. Those things should be done in the next week. Everything came out great and we have really been enjoying it. I was waiting until everything was done before I post pics. It is close enough so I will take some pictures of the pool and post them. I will hold off on posting pics of the entire project until next week.

Thanks for asking!

We DEMAND pix! LOL! :) Katherine

Here they are, posted under a new string.

Here is a link that might be useful: Photos