Lipstick On A Pig

What I really want to say is "polishing a turd" but David hates the sound of that. I, however, insist that the turd analogy is much more accurate. Our pool deck (heck, the pool too) is really a piece of poop. I am not quite sure how old the pool deck is however I am pretty certain that the former owners of our house never stained or did anything to help preserve the deck. Our pool is also a bit dated. David and I are thinking that we may need to replace the pool in a year or two so until we do that we really don't want to replace the pool deck until we know what the new pool will be like. Therefore, in the meantime, we are trying to pretty up the deck until we are ready to replace it. ("Before picture" above) Or shall I say we are putting "lipstick on a pig".

This weekend we are working on getting our pool deck stained and our pool opened. Yes, I did say opened.....although I know it'll be a while before we can swim. Why are we in such a rush to open the pool?? I mean we live in Buffalo!!! It is still cold!!! But actually, we are heading out of town next weekend and will not return until Memorial Day weekend. So, our thought is that the weekend we return is when most people try to open their pools however when we return we will be ready to go. Yet, the warm weather better get here soon!

So, what did we accomplish thus far this weekend? Well, David washed and scrubbed down the deck in preparation of staining it. I turned the dirt in the landscaping around the pool (We pulled up some God-awful weedy landscaping last fall) and I planted two small shrubs and a handful of annuals next to the two rose bushes David planted a couple weeks ago. Madeline and I also worked on mulching this area too.

As previously stated, we worked on opening the pool. Since this past Fall was our first experience in closing a pool for the winter, this was also our first experience in opening a pool. Let me tell ya, we certainly learned a lot! Number one - we realized we pulled our pool cover too taught for closing. Our pool cover tore and caused many issues in trying to minimize the amount of leaves that ended up in the pool. Also, we are not sure if this had anything to do with us but over the course of the winter our pool skimmer cracked and needed to be replaced. Yep, not happy about that added expense as we were hoping to buy a solar cover reel and the skimmer replacement wiped away the majority of our budget for what we would have spent on the reel.....WHHAAAAHHHHH!!!!!

Although the deck is now scrubbed clean, it still must be stained. Yes, we started the process of opening the pool but the water is still green.....ooohhh how pleasant! So, I guess you can say that "the pig" is still naked of its lipstick. Yet, nonetheless, David encouraged us to "break in" the deck this evening. After putting Madeline to bed we temporarily moved some outdoor seating to the pool deck. We headed out to the deck with a jumbo candle and two glasses of wine. Ahhhhhh..... the sound of the pool filter running sounded like summer as we sat sipping wine while overlooking our beautiful green pool. We are soooooo close to being ready for summer!