Pool Renovation!

How to renovate your pool in ten simple steps:

Step 1: Glare at the murky mess in your deep end for four or five months.  Complain about the noise of the frogs who live in the swamp that is your pool.

Step 2: Hire workers to pump putrid water out, remove multiple bags of gross swampy debris, blast off old paint, and repair cracked cement and plaster.  Optional: let you children and dog run around in the empty (but clean!) pit in the backyard.

Step 3: Refuel said workers with lots of soda and gatorade as they coat the inside of pool, transforming it to a beautiful shade of bikini blue.

Step 4: Wait impatiently for three days while paint coating dries.  Get very excited about swimming.  Go shopping for floats and rafts.  Realize you waited about a week too long to find floats and rafts still on shelves.  (Back-to-school stuff already?  Really?)  Settle for sub-par floats.  Be happy they only cost a dollar.

Step 5: Hire a tanker truck to come fill the pool.  (Stand in shock when it takes three truckloads to fill it up!)  Allow tanker truck to entertain your children on a hot summer day when Daddy is out of town.

Step 6: Watch water dump into pool.  Start to get very excited at surprising your husband with a full and cold clean pool when he comes home!

Step 7: Cry a little when the second truckload goes in a little bit, um... greener than it was supposed to, and the pump isn't up and running correctly.  Begin to regret jumping the gun on having pool filled before husband comes home.

Step 8: Take frantic steps to clean and prime pump, repair pvc pipes, and shock green pool water. Begin to feel better (and proud!) when you actually successfully get everything, including the new-to-you saline chlorinator, working correctly.  Smile and take deep breaths as water clears up pretty fast.  Welcome your husband home to his new pool.

Step 9: Haul your very-pregnant belly and the rest of your family into the pool, and go swimming!  In your very own backyard! 

Step 10: Try not to mock your husband for being thirty years old, yet still playing with toy torpedoes.  Just relax and revel in the pool awesomeness.