Owning an older home anywhere in the world means projects–repairs and renovations. Each year we return to Montserrat with a list of the new projects and are always surprised that the list grows longer as we slog our way through the things that we planned to do. Something always goes awry with any change we make; some kink in the works always shows up and makes everything more complicated than we anticipated and there are always the unanticipated old house surprises. This year we planned on two major projects–filling and resurfacing our far too deep pool and redoing the roof. The roof is still undone. This is the story of the pool.

Our pool was one of the first built in Montserrat and it is a wonder that they created something almost like an infinity pool so many years ago. It is 15 by 30 feet. The bottom and one half of its length are in ground. The other half is supported on the steep slope on the back side of the property. Around the rim is a 14" wide concrete cap. Where the pool is above ground there is an iron grill and a 20 foot drop to the garden below. At the other end is the pool bath, a small tiled patio, a white decorative wall, a wrought iron door leading to the walkway in front of the house and an entrance to the house itself. Our goal was to make the pool less wasteful of water, the deep end being 12 feet, and easier to clean given the narrow rim and the steep fall possible with one misstep. Here is the story of this project.

At first we thought only to fill the most deep circular depression in the back half of the pool. That seemed doable and didn’t involve changing the pool’s drain pipes.

Our friend Dwayne Hixon-local pool king, however, advised us to do the job right and fill it to a level that solved both the depth problem and the cleaning problem all at once.

We talked and talked and decided he made sense. What started as a 20 cement bag job now was a 50 bag job. Cement never meant much in our lives before, but we have now developed an exquisite sense of what a bag of cement means. Each bag weighs 100 pounds and in the mixing each gets about double that amount of sand and then water. So, when all is said and done we would have to move more than 10,000 pounds of wet cement.

Up the road there was a group of men building a new home. They worked with skill and grace and Stassi thought they might be just the team to do our job. He spoke with the foreman, Joseph “Paddy” Weekes, and we were put on the schedule for the coming Sunday. I didn’t mention that during the two months of figuring out this project we had 30 bags of cement in the garage and 5 cubic yards of sand in the driveway. No one really knows what a cubic yard of sand is until it becomes a part of their lives–blowing in the wind, blocking access to the garage, just being there accusingly as the project is delayed and delayed. Stassi had also moved two truckloads of rocks from the garden to the bottom of the pool. Getting rocks from a load delivered to the driveway would have made the job just awful. Having to dig rocks from the garden rock piles all the way on the other side of the house made it ridiculous. That was my fault as I kept thinking this was the perfect way to get rid of all the garden rocks. Well, we didn’t get rid of them by even a third and Stassi was much the worse for it.

Stassi also had to figure out how to make a new drain that would link up with the old one under the new cap of cement. Being on a small island has its limitations sometimes as you can’t often drop by the pool store for a new drain. There isn’t a pool store so he used every bit of ingenuity he had and solved the problem with bits and pieces of plastic plumbing parts. The web proved very useful in learning about sealants as some will not hold up to the pool’s chlorine.

We rented a cement mixer which came with its owner and operator, Kenroy “Dub” Allen. We had Paddy’s crew and two of our own trusted workers–Alford “Fredo” Willock and Reuben “Nathaniel” Meade and we had Stassi. The day began with the arrival of the cement mixer, a complicated piece of machinery that allows for premixing of sand and cement with water that kicked off wheelbarrow loads like gumdrops. Paddy arrived and like a magician took timber directing his crew in its placement above the pool. We used our plywood hurricane shutters creating a raised walkway leading from the driveway to the pool. My bordering cactus garden was covered with a tarp. I hid in the house for most of this work fearing the worst. Chaos was about to happen and my comfort level was disappearing. I feared for the pool; I feared for my cactus garden. I thought about life as a renter.

We need a second load of sand mid job; a call is put in to Thomas J. Daley “George Allen.” At Sunday rates, he delivered 2 cubic yards of course sand within an hour saving what might have been a serious mess–a cement job half done.

The men work on smoothly for hours--Fredo in the pool with Stassi smoothing each addition of cement, Dub running the cement mixer, Reuben and Bony shoveling sand, and Myron and Trall pushing their wheelbarrows. It could not have been more well choreographed. My anticipation of chaos never materialized. These men worked almost like a dance team and they worked hard. Suddenly it was over, the mixer turned off, the men accepting soft drinks. Within short minutes, the scaffolding was undone and loaded on a truck, the hurricane shutters were back in the garage, the tarp covering my cactus was off and folded. The deed was done. These men were magical to watch.

Later that week, Fredo came to put a finish coat of smooth cement over the capping. A talented man with drainage, when the pool filled with rain water we watched as it drained in a perfect circle down to the last drop. A week later with the cement dry, Michael “Dr. Seuss” Thomas arrived to do the painting. We had decided against pool plaster in favor of a combination of paints we found here and there–2 gallons of baby blue epoxy for the deep end, followed by 2 gallons of off white epoxy for the middle, and the last 4 gallons of pool paint to be found on the island just covered the shallow end and stairs. Michael summoned up his creativity and painted the pool in perfect curves that once filled made it look almost like a beach with deep blue fading to white at the stairs. We’ve encouraged him to think of some new design for next year, maybe a mermaid!

We filled the pool, gave it a new solar blanket; it’s not only beautiful, it’s warm as a baby’s bath.

The players:

Dwayne Hixon
Joseph “Paddy” Weekes
Kenroy “Dub” Allen
John “Boney” Allen
Myron Daley
Reuben “Nathaniel” Meade
Wellington “Trall” Sweeney
Alford “Fredo” Willock
Thomas J. Daley “George Allen
Michael “Dr. Seuss” Thomas

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