From Mundane to Mayhem

I know it’s been a long time between posts, but there just hasn’t been anything all that interesting to blog about. We’ve spent the last number of weeks doing routine home maintenance. You know, things like reorganizing cupboards and closets, rearranging furniture, and scraping, sealing, painting exterior walls. All activities that needed to get done, but are about as exciting as watching paint dry.

But come the end of this month, a bit of mayhem will be introduced to our lives. The reason? Well, we decided to have a pool and pool house built! And for those of you thinking we already have a pool, well, we did but the liner needed to be replaced. The UV rays here took their toll and we developed a pesky leak that was beyond patching. We looked into having a replacement liner shipped down from the States, but it would cost almost the same price of buying a whole new above-ground pool here. With that information in hand, it was only a small leap to decide we would go with having a pool and small house built.

Here's a look at our floor plan (click on the image for a larger view):

A key feature of our design is having the entire area -- pool and house -- under a roof and screened in on all sides. This should eliminate the amount of debris in the pool, plus dramatically cut down on the mosquitoes. To ensure the temperature of the pool doesn't drop with it being under a roof, we will install a solar heating unit. This means we should be able to take a comfortable dip even during the winter months.

We also will be creating a hallway from the back wall of our spare room that will lead directly to the pool house. This will give us and guests access to a bathroom and changing area.

These drawings show a side view (top drawing), the screened wall at the pool end (bottom left drawing), and the semi-walled area for the back of the pool house (bottom right drawing).

All of this will make way more sense once construction starts and we take pictures. We will be using the same contractor as our friends Dave and Dianna Rider, who are undergoing their own remodeling project. You can read all about that on their blog. Once the contractor and his crew are finished with that job, our project will be the next one they tackle. 

We're very excited to get things going and only find it a tad bit scary. We've never been involved with a construction project this big. You can be sure that we'll document the whole shebang here. Stay tuned!

P.S. If you have a spare moment or two, why not pop on over to The Wright Table to check out my latest recipe adventures?