We Did Our Best To STIMULATE The Economy

Everyone knows we have been working on the pool project for about a month and we finally wrapped it up Memorial Day weekend (well mostly).  Our budget was our entire stimulus check ($1200) – and we did our best to stick to it.  Actually we did a great job at sticking to it.  When it was all said and done, I think we hit it within $20 bucks.  The good way. 😉

It was a lot of work, and with the heat of that weekend (99-100 degrees) it seemed even harder that it really was.  Since I had cleared that area of grass and such the week before and we had picked up the 35 bags of sand to go down before the pool was erected. The rest had been picked up during the week before (like all the pots & plants, pool and all that).

So lets get it started eh?

First step was taking those million bags of sand and getting them evenly distributed.  Shala manned the opening of the bags, and I took them (50 lbs. each) and played a nice little game I like to call OCD-ness.  I think Shala got the good end of the deal, since she didn’t have to walk around with those bags of sand… but hey, I’m the man – that is what I am supposed to do right?  Right.  Below you can find a pic of the sand laid out in nice lil piles… ok, PERFECT piles of sand placed exactly where they should have been placed.  😉

After laying out the sand… we pushed it around and got it all leveled out.  See below.

So now with the base of sand down so that we wouldn’t have any problems with grass growing up in the bottom of the pool or anything pokin’ through the bottom and causing leaks.  It is called preparation people!  Thinking ahead!  haha

With the thing level we spread out the pool and started putting together the pieces and such.  Originally we were going to go with one of those blow up ones (you know, you blow up the ring and then fill with water)… but they just looked so shady.  I was afraid we would put all this money into this and watch it all go to hell.  Not cool.

We decided to go with the aluminum frame pool, which was pretty easy to setup.  After laying out the liner, we probably had the frame built in an hour.  That may sound like a lot, but it really wasn’t that bad.  I mean considering we went from no pool, to empty pool in an hour… is quite an accomplishment. 

So after putting it up, we had to wait.  Yup… wait.  This filling up the pool thing took longer than anything else.  I guess you don’t really think about how long it would take… you just figure you would be immediately swimming.  Nope.  So come midnight we were about half way full and called it good for the night.  Or was it half empty?

The funny thing is all night I couldn’t sleep because I was thinking about filling up the pool, so at 6:00 AM I couldn’t take it anymore and got up and started the last hurrah in the filling up process.  By noon we had everything finished and ready for swimming.  However… we had other plans that couldn’t be avoided – so we had to skip out of the swimming until the next day.

With everything finally done… you can check out the final pics of everything in place.  Thank you Uncle Sam, you hooked it up fatty style.  Enjoy.