When Hubs and I first looked at this house, we weren't that impressed. To me, it's laid out similarly to our old apartment, but it has three bedrooms instead of two. The deciding factor for us was the pool.
It is enormous! 20' x 40', in ground, shallow end is 3.5' with a straight slope down to 8'. It even had a diving board. It was in deplorable shape, but we brought it back. We even kept the old liner for many years. We just kept patching it up. Over the years, we've replaced the filter, from those god-awful fingers, to a very powerful earth filter. We put the return line back underground where it belongs. We've even replaced the underground lines.
In the beginning, the electricity to the pool was literally strung from the house to the pump house through the tree branches. Totally illegal. We had that fixed. We had to have the entire pool grounded too.
More recently we replaced the old liner, and the extremely old and very loud pump. Now that liner needs to be replaced. It wasn't quite the right size, and none of the top corners stayed in. Now the sides are coming out too. Hubs started pouring a new surround to the pool. We have three sections done. He hasn't had the time to do the whole thing. He's been doing it himself because to pay someone to come with a truck and pour it all at once would be extremely expensive, and they'd have to take down some of the chain link fence. Not to mention the damage to the back yard.
Over the years, the pool has gotten lots of use. When Jesse was small, all his friends would come to swim. Hubs and his fellow mechanics would come on their lunch break to swim on hot days. All our friends knew they were always welcome at any time to come and swim. They didn't even have to ask, just come and enjoy. I can't even count the days that I would go down there and find Shannon Fitzgerald already lounging on a raft, or napping on the couch on the patio under our bedroom. He was lots of fun. Jesse loved him.
These past few years, Hubs and I have discussed filling in the pool. He knows it's getting harder and harder for me to help him take care of it, and this year is the first year I've actually considered it. At this time, I'm the only one who's using it. It's really almost a waste of time. Now Hubs tells me he's concerned I won't be able to get in and out of it, using the ladder.
So we either close it and fill in the yard, or he can get a new liner, finish the surround, and if he does so, he wants to get one of those fancy covers that an elephant can stand on. I am getting close to telling him it's too much work for him. But then he says that maybe the grandkids would come to swim. So we'll keep it open this year, and then decide. It's been that way for a couple of years now.
If we were to fill it in, I would want to keep the fence up, and have a beautiful fenced yard for the grandkids to come and play. He insists the fence will come down. We'll see.
Any comments are welcome, I'm so confused and I could use help deciding. Thanks for listening.
Keep your pool! You will definitely miss it if you fill it in. I grew up with an in ground pool. We moved when I was 19 & I always missed the pool. I'm 50 now & we have an above ground 15 x 30 oval. I enjoy it, but there is nothing like an in ground pool.
ReplyDeleteWe lived in Florida for the first 30 years of our lives together. I sort of wanted a pool because I had never had one but my husband refused. Flat out REFUSED. He said it was worse than taking care of a lawn because even though the pool took up part of the lawn, you still had the rest of the lawn as well as the pool. I am sure he was right and I probably would not have used it everyday. Good luck with your decision.
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