We Got a House with a Pool

And honestly, having one is really nice and we miss it

Our backyard in Houston looking its very best.

When my husband Jeff was in elementary school, his parents bought a large farmhouse on a sizable lot in the middle of our southwest Michigan small town. Jeff and his siblings still recall that they were promised a pool when they moved into the house with a large backyard.

It never happened. Instead, his parents bought a hot tub after all the kids were grown.

So when we decided to move to Texas, Jeff made it clear that we were buying a house with a pool.

I had my reservations. Our kids were still young and one of my personal fears is drowning. We knew nothing about pools and pool maintenance. And I was convinced that buying a house with a pool was going to be significantly more expensive than buying one without.

As we started our house search, I learned three things very quickly: every neighborhood seemed to have access to a neighborhood pool; not every house in Texas had a pool but if it did, it didn’t have much of a yard; and pools, while expensive to install, do not add much to the value of a house.

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Viewing the Lone Star Through a Rearview Window

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This caused another point of conflict as we searched for a house. I also wanted a yard. We had two small children who were used to being able to play outside and I wanted room for a new playset. We had an adolescent puppy and we were discussing getting another puppy once we moved in. We needed room for our dogs to potty and play without falling into a pool.

The first house we put an offer on had a gorgeous pool but no real backyard. And while the inside of the house had everything we were looking for, I was happy when the offer was rejected. It didn’t feel like the right house for us, and part of that reason was the lack of outdoor play space.

Then a house with a yard and a pool came across my search feed. The yard was huge, the pool attractive enough, and the house had all but one feature we had been looking for: a separate play space for the kids inside the house. It also didn’t hurt that the couple was in the middle of a divorce, so the price was better than we could have hoped for. We discovered that our yard crossed the easement (which explained why it was so much larger than most of the yards in the neighborhood) and backed up to an old cemetery, which meant we had very quiet neighbors behind us.

So Jeff got his pool and I got a yard. Despite the Texas heat, or maybe because of it, our yard got used all year round.

We had a dog door that our two dogs used multiple times a day, going in and out of the house at will. When we moved into the house, our adolescent puppy Bella ran into the backyard and straight into the pool, giving her a healthy fear of the pool water she passed along to our second puppy JT when we brought him home. I will never forget Bella shepherding JT around the outside edge of the pool the first time he went into our backyard.

When the kids were little, they played on the new playset we bought from Sam’s Club. As they got older our daughter held performances for an imaginary audience on the makeshift stage built along the back fence. Our son practiced kicking soccer and footballs. And everyone used the pool, especially the kids.

The pool heater was broken, so we didn’t use the attached hot tub for years, but the kids used the smaller space as a safe place to play until they were older and more proficient at swimming in the larger portion of the pool. Since Jeff wanted the pool, I left him in charge of pool maintenance, and he dove into learning everything he needed to know about taking care of a pool. He eventually convinced me to switch the pool to saltwater so that it would be easier to maintain when we were gone on extended vacations, and he was right. He used a Raspberry Pi to monitor the temperature, chlorine levels, and pH, minimizing the need for regular chemical tests. Although he still ran them frequently enough, especially when the pool turned green while we were gone for two weeks for a summer vacation.

Eventually, we decided to resurface the pool and spend significant funds to make our backyard much prettier. While a pool may not add much to your house value and may actually scare away some buyers, having an attractive and safe pool area is important. When we decided to move back to Indiana, we discovered that a beautiful backyard could also sell a house. It wasn’t going to be cheap. To resurface our pool and redo the decking, it would cost $25,000-$30,000, and that was without using higher-end finishes. There were so many things I wanted to do in our house: new floors, a new kitchen, an improved living room/library. Our house needed new siding. And we kept talking about solar panels. But we spent a lot of time in our pool. We entertained our neighbors and friends with our pool. And so we would spend the money improving that space.

We made it a two-year project and for the first time ever, hired contractors to do the work. The first spring they tore up the pool itself and resurfaced it. The second year they tore up the decking, updated the layout of our pool area, fixed electrical issues that we discovered could have led to electrocution, and finally replaced the pool heater. Our last winter in our house, we finally used the hot tub as a hot tub, and enjoyed 40-degree nights sitting in the hot water while the steam rose up around us.

I didn’t want a pool, but I’m glad our family had one for the years we lived in Houston. Our kids learned how to swim on their own and spent countless summer hours enjoying the outdoors under my watchful eye out the back window. Our pool was usually ready for swimming by Easter, and when we had friends over to celebrate the kids readily jumped into the 70-degree water and dried off in the sunshine. Our pool was usually perfect in June and far too warm by August, when we really needed to cool off. But by October, the slightly cooler temperatures and fall rainstorms usually cooled it off enough to be comfortable again for another month or so of swimming.

We miss our pool, but now that we’re back in Indiana, I’m not scrambling for one any time soon. We know some people with pools and we can enjoy those spaces when we decide that we need to go swimming. I do miss being able to push my kids out of the house and into the pool when they need to burn off energy. I miss those few times I dove in after a hot run just to cool off a little. I miss having a hot tub to sit in when I need to relax. And I miss our outdoor entertaining space.

It was one element of Texas living that we loved, and it’s a memory that we will always treasure.

Before

Destruction

Resurfaced Pool

Resurfaced Decking

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