Landscaping, fixin' and lack of pool progress

A friend and builder has resurfaced and is taking care of our long driveway, retaining walls and rear yard landscape preparation.  Looking forward to having a rear yard the kids can play in and where we can plant stuff at last. So far we have busted the water pipe to the house twice.  Mostly because the pipe goes from the meter in the centre of the block all the way to the northern boundary and traverses towards the southern boundary about 8m from the front of the house.  And no marking in sight to let us know that's how they dealt with it.

Brett or Brent from BnB turned up today and made it so we can lock our balcony door (so excited about that), close the doors on the kids bedrooms, covered a gas pipe which was left exposed on the deck and stopped the guest room sliding doors from coming off their rails (plus some other minor fixes).  Plus he came up with a solution for the vanity cabinet debacle.  Very happy with that.  I've let go of a lot of minor issues but I want the big ones sorted.

Lastly the pool.  Our tiling was done last Tuesday.  7 weeks since the concrete pour.  And yes they charge $4 per cut of a non standard tile.  $2.50 for a boring little clay paver.  Just one more thing to watch out for when budgeting for a pool.

We didn't choose to have a waterline tile when doing the pool quote - at each step the pool company keeps pushing us to do it - for an extra $2,000.  Hmm a nice glass tile sets you back $55/sqm.  Only need about 3sqm.  Exorbitant tiling cost for those tiles is $1,100.  So they make minimum a $730 profit on that part alone.  We have a waterline tile now by the way.  At less than the $2K pool company quoted of course.  The other upsell they try is the nicer interior.  I just want a pool the kids can swim in - I'm not looking for the forecourt of Versailles here people.  Australian standard off-white pebble will be just fine.

Little touches we have added include a retaining wall for an extra $1K.  Seems excessive.  Some stack stone to go on that - $167 for the materials, $500 the rip off price for laying about 1.5sqm of tile.  And we used trojan edge travertine for the pool coping - should have cost us about $500 but we spend $60 more than we needed to.  Just have to find a use for the wastage I guess.  The tiler did a lovely touch with the skimmer box cover though - he cut a piece of travertine to size and put two finger holes in it so no ugly plastic cover to deal with. 

Those touches have added a bit of class without breaking the bank.  Currently taking the pool total to about $33K including the excavation bill shocker - but we hope to make the pool company wear that cost.  And we still have the sewage, electrical and water connections to do.  They cover 6m of sewage.  We are halfway down a 91m block and the sewage connection is at the rear of the block.  6m won't even get past the 7m pool.  LOL.

So beware when you get a budget pool expect to pay at least about half the price again to finish it.  More if you want glass fence and nice pool surrounds.