I'm getting bids to resurface my 20+ year old pool and am having a tough time selecting a finish. It's a dated 80's pool/spa combo with tan safety brick coping. I'm hoping to go from "dated" to "classic". I'm planning to swithch the coping out to a used brick bullnose and I'd like to upgrade from standard plaster while retaining the light color.(not necessarily white but, the pool is in the hot sun all day dark pools in my neighborhood get really warm) My kids and their tender feet don't like our neighbors' pebble tec/river rok/gemstone pools. So, I'm honing in on DiamondBrite, 3M Colorquartz and PebbleFina. Honestly though, I'm not clear on the difference. It all sounds like marketing fluff... maybe it is. Can someone help me compare/contrast these materials? In particular, abrasiveness, durability, colorfastness, etc. I'm also curious how it stacks up agains plain old plaster.

The travertine was sand set, I don't have a picutre of the prep before the pavers were laid. However, we do have Woodridge quartzite already on the summer kitchen and veranda. I really didn't like the Woodridge (too orange for my taste) and so I didn't want to continue it around the pool. So we transitioned between the Woodridge and the travertine by having travertine on the step tops and Woodridge on the risers. Here is a photo, nothing has been washed yet so the decking is still very dirty: Here is the fire pit: They are putting the rock around the back of the waterfall today and getting the in floor cleaning system operational. We have to decide what to put around the fire pit where the concrete is, they have suggested landscaping, travetine facade or spray deck to match the travertine color.

We are having our pool re-plastered and upgrading from the previous plaster to pebblesheen. We initially were looking at pebbletec and when we opted for sheen instead it was the same cost, no upgrade. I'm thinking you might want to check with a different company. There should not be an upsale cost between tec and sheen unless you are including additives that were not present in the tec.

Our previous pool had Pebble Tec (Tahoe Blue). It was nice. It was a good fit for the more natural look of the pool. After about 6-7 years, it was starting to show some bald spots. I didn't mind the rough feel, but the kids did end up with bloody feet on occasion. The one thing I always noticed was a bit of green in the color, so I felt the name was a bit misleading. In the new pool, with almost insistence by our PB, we went with Diamond Brite (Midnight Blue). After seeing it in another pool, I knew that was what we were going with. Once again, the name of the color is a bit misleading. It is far from "midnight" and really more of a sky blue. It looks amazing in full sun, and not too dark in the shade/dark. Having lived with it since March, I'm 100% satisfied with the choice. Despite the DB aggregate not being fully exposed yet, I love it. There are some splotchy areas, and the install was not done to my level of expectation, but we're still very happy. We plan to do an acid bath once the temps drop and hopefully that will even things out a bit. Only time will tell how the DB holds up, but I see little to no blue plaster when backwashing compared to the Pebble in the previous pool. It is much less rough than the Pebble tec and in our case, I feel it goes with the look we were trying to achieve. Midnight Blue Diamondbrite is a very unique color and I had a hard time finding many people who have gone with that choice. We get a LOT of compliments about the color of our pool and every day when I look at it, it makes me smile. I am a big fan of the color, but understand it may not be for everyone. I need to update pics, but there are quite a few at various stages of our pool build: http://theaustindude.blogspot.com/ Here is a link that might be useful: Our Pool Build Blog