By Jason Mitchell
With two kids at home, this family was happy to have a space that complemented their active, healthy lifestyles. Like many, they decided early in the pandemic to look for additional real estate, with more room to roam in a country cottage. After an exhaustive search, they revaluated, and started looking for their forever home with lots of property instead. When they found the property in Uxbridge, Ontario, the homeowners called Pool Craft—the same company that built their first pool in 2015—to install their new forever pool. For pool builders, repeat clients are a true testament to the company, its team, and their design and installation process.
The plan for the design
The plan was to take all the elements the family felt they would enjoy in a cottage and bring it into their dream backyard. The wish list included a large pool with room to play, a hot tub, a water feature, and a large patio.
The pre-construction canvas was rolling meadows with a few trees scattered throughout, and a mature forest in the back.
Every project starts with a site visit where measurements and elevation levels are recorded. On this site, slight elevation changes meant some retaining would be needed to step down to the proposed pool area. The existing landscape had some flagstone the homeowners liked and wanted to keep close to the house. Overall, the initial challenges on the site were few.
The homeowners worked with the team and came up with a design featuring a pool running horizontal to the house, a side patio for an open sitting area, and a pergola. The design was finalized in November 2021 and the company was excited to break ground in spring 2022.
The unforeseen challenge
One of the biggest hurdles Pool Craft experienced, on all projects during the pandemic, was the time lag between planning and building. Supply issues meant everything needed to be booked and ordered well before execution, but the time lapse before breaking ground gave homeowners months to anticipate and add other elements to their projects, or simply, change their minds.
