I started real basic and then just tried things to see if it works. I put a lot of large trays and cutting boards down the right hand side. I put a lot of small bowls on the shelves to the left. Large utensils like bbq tongs in the place they say serving dishes. I learned how to load glad bowl lids by trial and error. I will say that unlike standard dishwashers you can really pack this thing and it still gets everything spotless. The upper right front corner on top is the only spot that is a dead zone. They have diagrams. One for New Zealand has a lot of wine glasses. One for UK has a lot of tea cups and serving dishes. One for US that uses both drawers. Best part is that the captain of the dishwasher loading police, my bil, is rendered speechless since he doesn't know the right way to load it.

Mine is getting filled as we speak and the area will continue to be a work in progress with an Ivory travertine patio floor down the road. This is a modest existing pool remodel. We took out the silly spa with its four puny jets, odd size, and no light and made it into a conversation niche. In the before design you couldn’t heat up the spa without heating up the entire pool. Surface- Wet Edge New Zealand Tropical- peal matrix but with the deeper blue/green dye used in the Chilean Tahoe. The last picture with spa and orange coping is the Before .

So plaster on day 8 (04.06.12) Awesome. They came by and started work immediately to avoid rain on their parade (my parade actually). They got through the first coat and then second perfecting and smoothing the shape and finishing off the coat and it started raining lightly on and off, but these guys were prepared. They set up a tarp and continued under the rain and finished it off. It soon looked beautiful and the walls were white and clean. Then it started raining really hard, but it was okay since they were doing their acid wash and stuff and off they went. Then they set up hose and let it sit and said to just watch it and it should be done in about 20 hours or so. To my surprise, indeed it filled up overnight and finished at 4:45 am. Wow. Sooner then expected. Good water pressure I guess. My pool looks GREAT. Filled to an ugly green but after Bob, my PM, came the next morning and cleaned up and started the pumps; Voila - THERE WAS MY DREAM POOL. A couple hours later another guy (maintenance) passed by and cleaned up my leaves and checked my pool out as well and we were good to jump in. Yeayyyyy. What a difference. FINALLY GOT MY POOL. Now all that's left is my sod, my lights and decor and my pool is nothing but enjoy and relax. LOVE it. Spitters (sprinklers), umbrella and the sunshelf make all the difference of a look. My turtles look awesome creeping into the pool on the steps and as for my dolphins..... they look nice but you barely see them because of the returns running and movement in the water. I guess they are also too light in color. So my suggestions for those going with mosaics; go with dark, bright, strong, colors. And big if they will be in deeper then 4 feet. But it looks great and doesn't beat the deal. As for the water temp, it is colddddddd as can be, but hoping that it will warm up, otherwise I will for sure have to get some kind of heating set up. Thinking of solar panels, so it's absolutley free after initial cost. I truly want to swim most year round, especially here in South Florida. Also my standard 100w light will have to go, after seeing what a beautiful pool I have and how awesome it looks, the light just needs more wow. I now want the LED light changing thing. My Xmas gift list will have to come earlier. Maybe mothers day idea. ??? :) Thank you to my saviors at Cliffs Pools. No messing around or delays. True and followed everything. Wow. Finally I made a right choice. I remember starting this post and doubtful with who I should choose. And not trusting anyone after my horrible experience. I am sooooo happy I am writing a happy story and ending it full of joy and good stuff and not what I was used to at the beginning. THANK YOU GOD. Plaster work. Sunny as can be and to me it looked beautiful. They knew in the forecast to expect rain so they prepped up with a tarp. Raining as they finish acid wash. My beautiful turtle mosaics. View from side of my dolphins and turtles. Fill up. Check out the color. Wow. Greeeeeeeeeennnnn. OMG, I think that is a frog on the right side swimming. Already visiting. I need to buy the Froglog asap. PM shows up to check the pool and put in chemicals and start my pumps off. Yeayyyy. Soon after chemicals are in. My pool starts turning blue. Ahhhhhhh, niceeee. Cleaning up, checking levels and picking my neighbors leaves from the bottom of the pool, and soon we get the okay to go swimming. Hope you enjoyed and got some pointers and ideas. As I did with those others who did the same for me. And if in South Florida and want to do your pool, you now know who you can trust and who is out of business.

Well, it's kind of a funny story. We were 100% set on Lucayan Blue. Now a few weeks have gone by and we've purchased some palm trees, cedar for a 10' x 16' pergola and flagstone for our patio to match our coping. This all meant that the extra $800 for the River Rok finish became debatable. Weighing heavily on our minds was a plaster crew that hasn't done many River Rok pools. I've read that it's all in the application, so I don't think we can live with a rough surface due to inexperience. So now we're back leaning towards Diamond Brite Ocean Blue. (But I still havent seen 1 picture of Steel Blue or Bahama Breeze, which we also threw into the running.) And even with that, my PB has done a lot of DB pools, but never mixed colors. So we just might risk it. I refuse to get a white plaster pool! The plaster decision has been the absolute hardest! I really wish more people posted pictures of their pools with plaster color. Don't get me wrong, this board has been SO much help in figuring things out, but I could definitely use more examples. With that being said, as soon as ours is done I will happily post many pics of our pool for others to use as a reference.