Shasta Decking - Day 3

The decking workers came to the door a little while ago to let me know they were finished, so I figured now was as good a time as any to go get a few photos of the finished deck.



Overall view of the patio. We decided to go ahead and shasta deck this portion for serveral reasons. First and most important, it was just unbelievably slippery when wet. A friend's son slipped and fell when he was just a little one (Hi Hunter!). Second, it just didn't look right being cement when the rest of the patio was Shasta decked.






The barbeque, smoker and patio table are going to go on this pad.








An overall view of the pool taken from by the firewood stack.








This view is from the shed looking towards the back of the house.







Here's a close-up photo of the finished flagstone.










Another photo of the overall pool as seen from the dogs' house.





This portion of the patio deck is going to be used for our firebowl and chairs. I'm really glad that we had them fix it instead of just adding on to it.




And last but certainly not least is the new autofill cover that Shasta added.

Shasta Decking - Day 2

Today they continued working on the Shasta Decking. I'm really liking how it looks, which is a welcome change from previous changes.

I do have 1 criticism, which is a welcome change from being upset about how things have gone thus far. Anyway, I feel they should really tell the pool owners who are purchasing flagstone edging that it is only painted on, not actual flagstone. I still like how it looks, but I was expecting real flagstones around the pool.





Base coat on the deck









More base coat








Here's a photo of the junk left around by the workers. I understand the need for leaving this since they'll be back tomorrow, but it's really bugging Teresa.






More junk left by the workers










The back patio taped off








The creation of the flagstone edging. This view looks bad because they don't have the separation done between each faux stone yet.




Here's me trying to figure out if I acutally like the faux flagstone, or if I will just live with it. When the separator portion is done between each stone, it looks pretty good.





Overall view of the pool and flagstone edging

Shasta Decking - Day 1

Well, it's the first day of the patio being Shasta decked. The guys were here bright and early, around 7:30, and started working. They started the day by sweeping and power washing all the patio and deck areas that they were going to be working on.

About an hour in, the crew from yesterday came back to finish the cycolic steps. After talking to the deck crew for about 15 minutes they asked me if it was ok if they came back to finish first thing Monday morning. Apparently there was a 'language barrier' between the two crews that neither could overcome. hehe. :) I told him that wouldn't be a problem, figuring there was enough people in the backyard with just the deck crew.

Also later yesterday two more crews showed up.

The tile guy showed up and fixed the tile above the autofill line (which looks great by the way), but didn't fix the top of the skimmer inlet.

The pool pump crew showed up and changed around the pvc pipe between the pump and filter so that we could now open the pump to clean the skimmer bucket, but forgot to leave a backwash valve in their new piping. Also, they didn't hook the pump back up to electricity, although I'm not sure if they were supposed to do that, or someone else is coming to do it.

The front of the pool deck drying after being power washed.


A shot out the back security door.


Yet another shot out the security door.


One of the workers cleaning the edging between two pieces of the pool deck.


Paper being put around the edge of the pool to protect the new waterline tile.


Plastic in preparation for protecting the block fence.


The set up supplies that are going to be used for the decking project.


Another shot of the pool with the tile being protected.


The foundation layer of the Shasta deck project.


More...


DOH! The pool pump isn't hooked up to electricity yet. Gonna be hard to start it when the time comes. As you can see, the new PVC line between the pump and filter doesn't have a backwash valve in it.


Overview photo of the whole pool with the foundation layer on it.


The next batch of pictures are junk left around by the workers for the 3 days that they'll be here.











Garbage still left from the forming of the deck pads.

Minor Fix-ups

Today was Tuesday, and a crew came today to fix up some of the items the general manager pointed out yesterday. Considering it started out quite bad, the day ended up being rather productive for them.

The first problem was their list had items to fix, but no details. For example: Fix auto-fill. The guys were asking me if I knew more details, but I wasn't totally sure to what extent they were supposed to change the line.

Also, they were only supplied with an small jackhammer. Both of them were worried it wouldn't be enough to make the holes in the side of the pool. As you can see it ended up doing just fine, but it ran out of juice before they were finished. Not to worry, they said they'd be back tomorrow. :)





New autofill cover.










Lowering the autofill line so it's below the tile line.










Cutting out the location for the Cycolac steps.













Another view of the soon to be installed steps.












Yet more of the steps.












And yet more...











A photo of the unfinished skimmer area.

Shasta management shows up...

This morning was a very interesting morning. Roger (my Shasta supervisor) had told me the form and pour crew would be here today to fix the form and to actually pour in the same day.

Low and behold, I was awaken to the sounds of sledgehammers pounding cement at about 6:30. I threw on a shirt and went out back to see how they were doing. Actually I got ticked off for a minute when I thought I saw one of the guys kicking at Buddy. Good thing I waited before pummeling him into a pile of ground beef, since he was just kicking the rubber ball that Buddy kept bringing and dropping at his feet. :)

I still feel bad about having them come back out and tearing out the deck pad that was screwed up. I really wish we could have come to some acceptable compromise, but no matter what we came up with it just looked bad. We are spending way too much to not have it look the way we wanted.

Anyway, they had the deck pad re-formed by about 7:30, and it looked nice.

At about 8:30 I looked outside and saw Roger and someone else in the pool talking to each other. So of course I went out to say 'Hi'.

The man introduced himself as Ken (at least I think that was his name), and he's the general manager of Shasta's remodel division. He apologized for all the problems that we've had and said that he was taking care of it. Him and Roger were walking around looking for other items that had been missed, and they came up with a few that I didn't even notice.

1. The auto-fill line was too close to the tile. It would weaken the tile so it needed to be modified.
2. The underneath of the skimmer inlet was not finished being tiled. It needed to be finished.
3. The pool pump hadn't been hooked up to electricity yet. Nobody would have noticed until they came to turn it on, and of course it wouldn't have worked. Not a good thing after shooting the pool with Pebble-tech.
4. The PVC line between the pool pump and filter were too close to the skimmer basket cap. It was extremely difficult to open the skimmer basket cap.

We also talked about the timeline of the pool. I expressed my frustration at waiting over 4 months just for a remodel to be completed. Ken was actually very understanding and nice about the whole situation and assured me that it wouldn't be happening any more. He said the pour should be completed later today, and he'd have some crews out to fix the little things they found. And by Wed or Thu the deck crew would be here to get the Shasta Deck underway.

YA FREAKIN' HOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

Below are the photos from today's work:


The cement guys had to fix a section between our current patio and the raised portion that they installed. When removing the old raised portion, the jackhammer had broken off about 3 inches of the current patio, but when they poured the new raised section, they didn't bother to fix it. I kept meaning to let Roger know about it, but there were always so many other issues that I never remembered.


The following photos are the new deck pad that they poured. I'm much happier with this than the repair options we came up with.







Here are a bunch of photos of the finished waterline tile (except for underneath the skimmer inlet). Looks nice!