Pool? What pool?

After 21 years of service, our 24' pool is history. We first put this pool up in the yard of our Victorian home in Richmond, MI (I wish I had a digital photo to insert here, it was a gorgeous old home, built in 1879). When we sold the house 6 years later, the older couple who bought it was not interested in having the pool, so we took it down and moved it to our new home, where we have enjoyed it for 15 more years. 

The side wall was so faded it was almost white (having started out as a blue-ish gray woodgrain) and things were starting to corrode. 

Mike started looking for pools on Craigslist.  Eventually he found a 28' pool for $500 or best offer. It was about 6-7 years old, already taken down, and came with a much better filter/pump than what we had. We ended up getting the pool for $350.00! Considering this brand in this size goes for about $6,000-7,000 new, I think that is a heck of a deal! There are a few things that need to be cleaned up, and we will probably paint the top rails, but how can you beat that price? We'll have to buy a liner, obviously. We are going to dig the middle out to about 6-1/2 to 7' which will be nice, and put in a bottom drain which will make it much easier to keep clean. 

So we started draining the old pool last week, and today we unscrewed a million screws, found lots of wasp/hornet nests under the railings and inside the side posts (as well as many spiders and their nests and webs too) as we dismantled the whole thing. Mike will haul it all off to the scrap metal place and come home with a few bucks.  

We were hoping to get the bigger pool up this fall so we'd be ready to go in the spring, but that probably is not going to happen now. Instead, Mike hopes to at least get the hole dug  and prepared before winter, and we'll put the pool up in May. It will be nice to have a bigger pool, especially at such a bargain price!