The tile is here!

This morning, a big semi truck came by to drop off the tiles.  Oh, and this is only half of them.  The other truck is on its way.

We also have two pallets of the pavers that were removed; one of Craig's coworkers is going to take them to his house.  

What's new?

Well, we are now waiting for our tile to be delivered.  We had originally planned to use the same tile for the entire project, but the 3 cm for the driveway is no longer being made. So we had to change to one of our first choices for the driveway.  That was ordered in mid August, so we are now playing the waiting game.  C'est la vie! 

I just realized that I haven't shared the tile choices. Our driveway is Diana Imperial; the tiles are 16" x 32". Here's a sample photograph:

And this is our lanai and sidewalk choice.  It is called Shellstone; the tiles are 24" x 24". This isn't our pool, but ours will have the same type of infinity edge around the pool.

In the meantime, we had the exterior of the house repainted in the same colors that it has always been.  It's amazing how much better it looks even though it's not a different color scheme.  We were very pleased with Certa Pro Painters.  They were very responsive to us, and the project was completed in a week (with a holiday thrown in).

We also had our lounge chairs repainted and restrapped.  Seeing that they are about 40 years old, it was about time.  Leisure Furniture in North Naples did the job very quickly and at a reasonable price. They look brand new!

We also made our pool tile selection. The tile wasn't on our original short list.  In fact, the ones we short listed really looked a lot different from the photographs.  That's why it's always a good idea to check out a real item instead of relying on a catalog or website.

So ... drumroll please.  Here's what we chose:

I am having rotator cuff surgery soon, and I certainly do hope that the project is at least started before I go under the knife.  I will be able to sit in the recliner and "supervise" what's going on. Our contractor is going to love that, I'm sure LOL.

I have been trying to be very patient, but now I'm getting more and more excited since putting up a new post. Stay tuned for more updates!

What is the project?

Six years ago this past week, we received the plans from the landscape architect for our driveway renovation.  Last night, we finally signed a contract.  A lot happened in the interim, including the following:

We couldn't make up our minds, and that took a lot of time.

Hurricane Irma hit in 2017, and our time and energy were tied up in a new roof and new screen enclosure.  That project was not completed until Spring of 2019.

We resurrected the project and returned to trying to find a contractor to do the entire project: landscaping and driveway.  Every time we met with someone new, we would get different suggestions and ideas.  So, we dealt with paralysis by analysis.

In March of 2020, we had a water leak in our kitchen.  Again, almost a year from the leak until the renovations from that disaster were complete.  And, again, time away from our yard and driveway renovation project.

Finally, in December of 2021 we made the decision to go ahead.  We concluded that the biggest problem we were having was trying to do it all, so we switched it to the hardscape version only with plans to do the landscaping after that part was complete.

Like many renovation projects, things began to snowball.  Our initial plan was simply to extend the driveway to make it circular. Our house is on a corner lot, and with several people in the house all driving their own cars we were regularly jockeying cars around; extending it out to the side street made a lot of sense.  Well, just like the mouse in the story If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, one thing after another was added to the project.  The initial project was to change the driveway from concrete to pavers, and since we would have some left over, we thought we could add a small pad on the backside of the house for our firepit. (Yes, people who live in Southwest Florida do enjoy a firepit, especially when the temps drop into the fifties in January!)  As long as we were going to be doing that, we justified redoing the walkway from the front of the house to the back as well.

Fast forward to March of 2022.  Craig was doing research on the internet and found this beautiful porcelain paver. We visited the hardscape.com showroom in Fort Myers and fell in love with the product. There we go again! Another amount of time spent on making that decision, but that was definitely time well spent. I think that the paver part of the project was another stumbling block that we had.

If we were going to go through with adding the porcelain pavers to the driveway and the walkway and the pad we decided that it would make sense to redo the pool deck at the same time.  Who wants a beautiful porcelain paver driveway with a twenty-year-old faded deck? Sure! Let's do the pool deck, too!  

Doing that would require us to pick new waterline tile.  Another set of decisions to make! At least we have a deadline of July 20 to make our choice.  I'll post that information in a future post along with our thought process of how we came to that choice.  

Last night, we met with our hardscape contractor and finalized the contract.  Six long years have gone by, and now we are ready to start construction. First, though, we have to wait for the porcelain pavers to be made and shipped to us.  Then it's on to demolition and reconstruction.  I'm giddy with excitement at the prospect of a finalized project.  

Won't you join us on this journey?