Our new St John swimming pool is taking shape...literally!

The plywood forms for the pool walls are up and ready for the plumber & electrician

to run their piping & wiring before they are literally set in concrete

Friday morning we had our regular weekly conference with our terrific contractor -

Carlson Construction

.  What is amazing to us about that is, first virtually nothing on St John happens on a '

regular

' basis! The fact that we have our weekly meetings on schedule is remarkable (and telling about just how good Carlson Construction is!). This leads me to the second almost universally-held feeling -- that it is next to impossible, at least during the construction period, to think of your contractor as '

terrific

'!  Well, terrific they are!  Dave Carlson and Matt Mueller lead our team and are both great craftsmen, honest, good-natured, and

great

problem solvers!  

We are about midway through our pool project and are progressing well on schedule.  This past week we formed the walls of the pool and started the forming of the stairs and bench seat. Yes, a cool amenity of the pool will be a bench seat across the entire east side of the pool so, you can sit in the water and look out at the Caribbean Sea.

Lovely!  

The bench seat is being formed by Phillip, the closest worker

(the seat will extend 20' along the east side of the pool next to the existing tiled patio)

The pool stairs and bench are being formed

(you can see the cut-out for the stairs on the left)

Work is being done on the western side of the pool

which will be curved

(really cool!)

I love the footings!

Stay tuned! 

Walls go up on the newest pool on St John...

The walls - at least in plywood - are up on the pool

Now that the concrete floor has cured, Carlson Construction got to work this week erecting the plywood forms for the pool walls. Plywood will surround the rebar, plumbing, and electrical wiring prior to concrete being poured.  More work to do before the concrete flows but it has been a good week so far for our St John swimming pool project @ Great Expectations.

Day 4 - Sun and lots of steel

We awoke to a wonderful Caribbean sky:

View from our webcam (we actually have the exact view from our bed in the Owner's Suite!)

With a sunrise like that it was bound to be a great day...and, it was!  Our crews showed up early. Folks here start work early (7 AM). The first one here was a guy delivering water and ice for the guys.  As you can imagine, working all day in the tropics you (should) drink a lot of water! Right behind him came Dave's crew.  We have lived here long enough to know good crews and crews that just slide by.  Dave's guys arrive on time and get to work! Obviously, this we love!  

Rock-a-Rock, our excavator, arrived to do some fine-tuning for the pool and then departed to return to do back-filling when the pool is formed.The day was spent cutting and forming rebar....a long and somewhat tedious but, oh so important job! This pool will go nowhere. It will be very sturdy:

The steel rebar, which is thick, will be placed in the concrete surrounding the pool to make sure that the pool is secure

And while the rebar is formed, the pool site is also framed with wood for the concrete to be poured into:

Boy, are those footings wide!

And, if you think life is so easy in the tropics, here is proof hubby worked so hard his pants ripped!

Chuck literally worked his pants off!

Day 3 - Rain, Sun, and pool starting to be framed

Last night brought some wonderful rain. When we woke to gray clouds we thought we might be rained out of any construction.  While we love the liquid gold (i.e. rain) that fills our cisterns but not when it conflicts with our construction so we were a bit disappointed when we saw rain this morning: 

Rain filling our gray water (for plants) cistern which is under the tennis court

But, as quickly as the rain came, the sun started to poke out of the clouds:

We have fabulous clouds around St John!

And then it turned into a(nother) perfect day:

Perfect weather for boating or constructing a pool!

On to day #3 -- Rock-a-Rock, our excavator, finished digging the footings so his job is done for a while.  He will return to back-fill the pool and grade around the new pool patio once the pool has been formed and the concrete poured which is weeks off.  

Those are some pretty BIG footings

We got rebar (the metal that goes into the concrete to hold it in place), wood and plywood (used to form the pool and support the concrete until it is cured) delivered today:

That is some pretty big rebar

Once the excavator finished, Dave's crew started framing the area:

Looking west over Chocolate Hole harbor

Another great day!

Day #2 of the pool project and we are still smiling!

Note two machines in picture our wonderful backhoe driver, Joel aka 'Rocka-Rock', alternated between them

Day #2 of our new pool project has come and gone and, happily, life is still good on St John!  We had a great day.  We (and I say 'we' generously since 'they' did the work and 'I' did the picture taking!) dug our pool footings today. Our excavator who drives both machines is phenomenal! He worked tirelessly in a fine-tune way to make sure that our 'footings' are deep enough and (obviously) in the right places:

Footings being dug

So, at the end of day #2:

Ready for water? Not quite... Note we have closed the Great Room hurricane shutters during the construction