i just went swimming. in a shipping container.

i finished a bible study with some friends on the roof and realized that i could just get on a suit and go downstairs.  this has only been 15 months in the making…

so the pool is blue.  really really really blue.  the water looks beautiful, and there are all sorts of interesting plays on space, verticality, and private/public space when you’re in the pool.  there are 10 feet from the back wall of our house to the fence, and all 10 feet are pool, which means that if you are standing in it, water just up to your chin (wow, perfect, eh?), and you look up, you see an alley to the sky with galvalum on one side and fence on the other, then pecan, then stars.

i find perspective hard to capture with a digital camera (or any camera, for that matter), so what follows are my attempts to show the final result.  there is a list a foot long of things visible in these pictures that is still undone (decks, planters, shed, plants, cleaning up), so just stick to the main event, eh?

also, those leaks turned out to be, like many other things in home building, worse in the first moment of discovery than in the problem solving.  we drained the pool below the level of the light, redid the light fixture (at midnight, and i wasn’t very nice to taylor), and then refilled to check again.  we decided marine epoxy was our second string, and i will now have to do a little epoxying underwater, as we have a drip.  but a drip isn’t bad, and definitely not disastrous.  we have had to tighten all our gaskets around the pool too (for inlets and outlets), but again, it goes with the territory.  in figuring our pool chemistry out, we have had an easier, less touch and go time, and have now added chlorine, shock (non-stabilized chlorine), muriatic acid (aka hydrochloric acid at 30%), 5# baking soda, more acid, 10# calcium, more acid, more acid, water to fill all !!! the way, and multi-daily doses of clarifier.  it is almost clear, and chemically stable and great.  like a real pool….

many views.  hope you don’t get vertigo.

on another note, we got the last electrical fixtures this week too, matthews fans, which taylor assembled, modded, and hung while we made hot wings and onion rings below in the ‘kitchen.’  here they are, along with a cool reflection on the roof.

i am grateful for the success.  it was, after all, a large metal experiment.