Pools & Spas
Now we come to the finishing touches - little details that make a big difference in the ultimate appearance of the renovated pool we've been watching develop here for the past several months. Through those many months, we've taken a pool that's more than 70 years old, rerouted all of its plumbing through cores cut in the old shell, added a circular spa in the shallow end, raised the floor in the deep end, reshaped the steps, added lights in a new, pool-long bench, installed all-new equipment and laid down gorgeous glass tile throughout - all without disturbing the beautiful limestone decking that surrounded the pool. As the project came to a close, we turned to a final
I've always loved the word "pamper." I love its meaning, I like the way it sounds and, most of all, I think it's the perfect verb for us Baby Boomers, because I know as we slide through middle age and head toward retirement, a word that means "to treat with excessive indulgence, gratify desires or coddle" will only grow in usage and importance. As I've pointed out many times, I'm a big proponent of indulging in the good life and gratifying one's needs for pleasure and enjoyment. One of the places you can go to plunge headlong into such indulgence is what some people call
Whether a spa is concrete or portable, custom or mass produced, sound hydraulics and good plumbing are needed if the spa's jets are to give clients the hydrotherapeutic action they crave. The manufacturers of portable spas do this work for their dealers, observes hydraulics expert Steve Gutai, putting watershapers who work in concrete at a disadvantage that must be addressed if a concrete spas are to compare favorably with a client's portable options.
From the start, it's been a project that has taken its direction from the art, spirit and cultural heritage of the clients and has always been much more to me than just another opportunity to design an attractive backyard and swimming pool. I've always gravitated toward work that lets me treat spaces with a sense of spirituality and a respect for the energy and sanctity of nature that ultimately will resonate with clients beyond the purely visual and functional aspects of the design. Often, those qualities are expressed in subtle ways that I end up appreciating more than my clients, but in the case of the project seen here, there was a joy and ease to the work because the clients shared my sensibilities. As a result, the work
A great many wonderful things can be said about all-tile pool finishes once they're done, but you can't lose sight of the fact that that such finishes require lots of planning, are difficult to apply and, as your clients will tell you, are far from inexpensive. And by "far from inexpensive," I mean that the price tag will usually give pause even to people of great means. This is all especially true with glass tile, which is applied using different (and generally more complicated) techniques than is ceramic tile and costs proportionately more. But that cost brings with it a great and stunning beauty that
I was hired recently to work on a substantial restoration project in a prominent Los Angeles neighborhood. I'd worked previously with the architect on a large estate, and he had referred me to the homeowners. After a couple of meetings, we determined we were all a good fit, and I was hired to design the exterior spaces of the home in collaboration with the architect, the contractor and the decorator. About a month into the project, the interior decorator was let go in favor of a restoration specialist. By that time, it was clear that many of the design decisions being made were not in keeping with
I've always believed that great projects require three key elements: a beautiful design, knowledgeable and careful construction, and a good client. For the project pictured here, all three of those pieces were in place, and the result has become a significant point of pride for our firm. The site consists of three sloping acres in the upscale community of Mill Neck on the north shore of Long Island, N.Y. The home sits at the highest elevation of the property, which reaches down to a large, brackish pond fed by the waters of nearby Mill Neck Bay. The swimming pool and surrounding hardscape and landscape were
In renovation projects, preparation of the pool's interior surface for a new finish is truly where the rubber meets the road - a key step in which what you've planned and what you actually do must come together. With this installment of "Details," we're doubling back to the Los Angeles project we left behind in October as we waited for tile to arrive from Italy. If you'll recall, the pool had been built in the 1920s and graces a property with a magnificent Gatsby-era home. As I mentioned at the outset of this interrupted sequence of columns, the homeowners have been extremely involved, always wanting to know as much as they possibly can about what's going on in their backyard. As I mentioned as well, the challenge
Water moving in all sorts of different directions (but always in controlled ways) is a hallmark of one our favorite designers, architect David Tardiff. We've built the watershapes for many of his projects, and we've particularly enjoyed those that put both his vigor and special subtlety on display. Time and again, his designs have challenged us technically while rewarding our clients with results that always seem to leave them proud, amazed and thoroughly satisfied. As we've discussed in our previous WaterShapes articles, a large part of our business is about executing watershapes for architects and landscape architects in the backyards of mostly affluent clients in southern California's Orange County. Each designer has his or her own creative style and sensibility, leaving us to adapt the work we do to their "idea sets" while lending our years of practical experience in engineering and construction to the process. In working this way, we find that everyone comes out a winner: The designer creates work that is based in reality; we stretch and expand our skills to realize truly spectacular design concepts; and most important, clients gain refined spaces that hit the mark with respect to both functionality and aesthetics. The two projects we'll visit on these pages are
The project I've been working on in the hills outside Hanover, Pa., has just about every feature, bell and whistle one can imagine. That inclusiveness of detail at every level has translated to an unusually intricate construction process, as I mentioned last time in discussing the excavation, forming, plumbing and steel phases. Now we get to the gunite. Where a garden-variety backyard pool involves placement of maybe 30 to 50 yards of concrete and some larger projects may run in the 50-to-70-yard range (and where most of mine tend to fall in the 90-to-130 yard range) - this project needed two gunite rigs shooting for two solid days, 12 to 13 hours each day. The pool shell alone (excluding the waterfall, the grotto and several other features we'll get into later) required a staggering 300 yards of concrete. That's about
