New Fence and Pool
Thanks to a re-fi on our mortgages, Patty and I had the opportunity to completely transform our back yard into our little paradise.
We were thinking of getting a pop-up camper trailer and began researching them on the internet. By the time we added all the options we wanted, commode, shower, AC, etc. we were in the $18,000.00 range. After discussing how many times a year we would realistically use the camper (4 or 5) we decided it was just to much. “Heck,” we said. “We can get a swimming pool for that!”
We shopped around and found a nice above ground pool, thirty three foot by eighteen foot oval for a very reasonable price and bought it.
If you have a pool, of course, you also need a fence. We decided on a six foot cedar picket privacy fence. We got a reasonable deal on the materials and bought them as well.
Sadly, the driver at our friendly next town over hardware store managed to blow out a knee and was unable to make deliveries. I recruited the help of my friend Larry and his son Joe. I recruited my nephew Kenny and his F250 3/4 ton pickup truck. My son Harold jumped right in to work as well. I even put the old 92 Ford Aerostar van back into action to haul 1200 lbs. of concrete mix. My friend Mike had a skid loader which he loaned us for the week and Larry Hall loaned me a trailer to haul it back and forth.
The pool installers wanted to charge an extra $4,000.00 to set up the pool. Out of our budget entirely! We began reading PDF files on pool installations and watched a video or two and decided it wasn’t worth anywhere near $4.000.00 to install. After discussing the situation with Larry, and after he watched a video on the subject, we decided to do the pool and the fence ourselves.
If you plan to do two huge projects at once, plan to work yourself to death. Plan to work your friends and relatives to death. If you are going to do it in July, plan on going through a case of bottled water and a case of Gatorade every day.
Larry, Joe, Harold, Kenny, Patty, Brenda and Sarah all pitched in and I can never thank them enough. Joe and Harold put up almost 600 cedar pickets in just a couple of days. Larry was terrific on the skid loader getting the pool area leveled out. It was a huge project and everyone pitched in and did whatever was needed to be done. They came back the next day, and the next, and the next just to work and sweat and see the project done.
Thanks to good friends and relatives Patty and I now have a great back yard. Thanks to their unselfish hours and hours of work we saved thousands of dollars, and though the work was hard and often frustrating, I’ll always carry fond memories of those days when we turned the back yard into a construction zone.