Tryptophan Makes Me Sleepy

While the busy Thanksgiving holiday has kept me from updating this blog recently, much work has been done since my last report. Apparently, Mexican Americans don't typically recognize this holiday and are more than willing to work.

All decks (save one) have been poured and the coping is well on it's way to completion. True to form, we've had a few delays and setbacks, but nothing dramatic. The crazy Americans who work the stone supply were not open so our willing non T-day observers were unable to get the stone as planned. This set the coping work back a few days, but we're back on track.

"Amaw" and "Papa" were in town for the holidays, and in addition to doing a fine job of raising El Duderino, Papa is a self professed expert in sprinkler systems. One of the things pool builders fail to mention is that they will absolutely decimate your irrigation system, and in fact, seem to enjoy doing so. One thing they also fail to mention is that sprinkler and irrigation professionals pretty much insist on abandoning your existing system, preferring to install a brand spanking new sprinkler system. Convenient, huh? Talk about a major conspiracy. That would be a major expense we hadn't quite budgeted for. Lucky for me, I was reared by a bona fide sprinkler pro, so we got to spend a fair amount of the holiday week working on restoring the destruction. It's by no means back to functioning, but we at least got things in order as to avoid having to go around the pool. Once they pour the final deck, we would no longer have that option.

For stone, we have opted to go with Leuders stone. As it's been explained to me, Leuders stone is quaried only in Leuders, TX and is essentially a deeper, more dense limestone. The Texas Governor's Mansion, which was burned down by arsonists earlier this year, is being rebuilt and this is the stone of choice, so we were told we might have to wait a long time to get it. Two days later, it was ready to be picked up.

We have been assured it is much less porous than the more common limestone typical to the area and will coexist with the salt water generator. We chose the tan color after seeing a few completed projects with it installed.

We have made final tile selections and the delivery of that will probably be our next major hold up. Our little project is really starting to look like a pool. The coping should be done in another day or so and then the tile will start going in. They are currently working on the stone work on the raised beam wall. I'm sure the neighbors appreciate the constant stream of leuders stone dust that continues to blow around the neighborhood.