The Questions We Couldn't Stop Asking

The questions, quandaries, and unexpected ideas behind our custom pool

We didn't begin with a list of pool features.

We began with questions.

Some were practical. Some were personal. Some were a little crazy. And some led to another question before we had even solved the first one.

That became our way of designing the pool.

Not simply asking, What should we build?

But asking:

Why does it have to be that way?
How would we actually use it?
What would make it belong here?
And what if we tried something different?

The answers became the pool.

“Mom doesn't swim. So how do we get Mom into the action?”

Mom wasn't going to get into the water.

But she also wasn't going to sit twenty feet away and watch everyone else have the fun.

So we built a ledge.

Wide enough for her chair, with her feet in the water. The kids could swim right up to her without ever having to leave the pool.

It wasn't really a pool feature.

It was a way to make sure Mom was part of what was happening.

“Why have an infinity edge fall into a two-foot trough?”

This was the question that started the lagoon.

Why create a beautiful infinity edge only to let the water fall into a narrow trough that nobody could use?

So we began imagining something different.

What if that water could be alive?

Swimmable.

A place to sit.

A place to play.

A place that could be experienced from both sides.

But first came the less glamorous question.

“Can we actually make the lagoon work?”

Could we move enough water?

Could we keep it clean and refreshed?

What about circulation, the lift and the difference in water levels?

Could the system support another body of water without becoming a maintenance nightmare?

We worked through the engineering.

The answer was yes.

So we could do it.

Now came the fun part.

“Okay, so how do we get in?”

Steps would work.

A slope would work.

Neither sounded particularly exciting.

We kept coming back to the waterfall. If we were already making it tall, why not use that height?

Then another rule appeared:

I would never have a child climb a ladder to get onto a slide.

So why build a slide that required a ladder?

What if the slide started at the water's edge?

Just three steps up.

A parent could stand beside a child, hold their hand and help them get positioned.

Then down the circular slide into the lagoon, finishing at water level with a big splash.

We wanted it large enough for adults to enjoy safely, too.

So we searched until we found the right one.

Right color.

Right dimensions.

Right shape.

And at the bottom, a seat for supervision.

Someone could sit there and watch the swimmers.

Little swimmers could stop halfway, rest beneath the waterfall, then continue across the lagoon.

At certain times of day, you could swim beneath the mason wall or even beneath the waterfall itself.

Suddenly the lagoon wasn't just another body of water.

It had an adventure built into it.

And then, naturally, we discovered the next question.

“Wait. How do we get out?”

The answer was stairs.

But finding the right stairs wasn't as simple as saying, “Let's put in some steps.”

We wanted them wide.

Stone.

Flat.

Textured enough to be safe without being slippery.

And substantial enough to belong to the landscape.

We searched for months.

Then we found what they called Chinese granite.

Thirteen pieces.

Four feet wide.

A textured surface that was exactly what we wanted.

They were sitting in a yard.

We bought them.

They arrived the following week.

Sometimes the answer takes months to find.

Sometimes it's sitting there waiting for you to notice it.

“Why is the pool deck just a hallway?”

The pool sits at standing height from the deck.

It would have been easy to make the deck simply a way to get from the house to the lower level.

But why?

If people were going to spend time here, shouldn't the deck itself become part of the gathering?

So we thought about the deck as a room without walls.

A place to sit.

A place to talk.

A place to watch the water.

A place to gather before going down.

The answer wasn't really about decking.

It was about making the journey part of the experience.

“How do we get the plates down to the pool without killing the cook?”

A surprisingly important question.

Food goes down.

Dirty dishes come back.

Glasses go down.

Phones go down.

Music goes down.

And somebody has to carry all of it.

So we placed a low glass coffee table at the sliding glass door.

It became a staging area.

The chefs could prepare food. Helpers could collect plates, bowls and glasses and carry them down to the pool.

After the meal, everything came back to the same place.

Dirty dishes.

Phones.

Music.

Whatever needed to come back upstairs.

It wasn't glamorous.

It was simply smart.

And sometimes the things that make a place work best are the things nobody notices.

“How do we make the family-room stairs simple without making them boring?”

We didn't want steep stairs that simply solved the elevation change.

We wanted a moment.

So there is a small landing.

Steps down to another platform.

Then the stairs divide left and right.

Straight ahead is a plexiglass wall with a view toward the pool.

You leave the family room.

You walk down.

You reach the platform.

You put your hand on the rail.

And you pause.

For just a moment, before choosing left or right:

I am here.

“Why does the screened porch have to be ten feet high?”

Because the house is.

The interior ceilings are ten feet, and the screened porch needed to feel like it belonged to the same architecture—not like an addition tacked onto the back.

We almost lost that one.

The construction crew had started building the wall posts at the wrong height.

We caught it.

The posts had to come out.

“Mom doesn't swim. So how do we get Mom into the action?”

Mom wasn't going to get into the water.

But she also wasn't going to sit twenty feet away and watch everyone else have the fun.

So we built a ledge.

Wide enough for her chair, with her feet in the water. The kids could swim right up to her without ever having to leave the pool.

It wasn't really a pool feature.

It was a way to make sure Mom was part of what was happening.

“Why have an infinity edge fall into a two-foot trough?”

This one started the lagoon.

Why create a beautiful infinity edge only to let the water fall into a narrow trough that nobody could use?

So we started asking whether the trough could become something alive.

Something swimmable.

Something you could experience from both sides.

But first came the less glamorous question:

“Can we actually make it work?”

Could we move enough water?

Could we keep it clean and refreshed?

What about the circulation, the lift and the difference in water levels?

Could the water actually function as another swimming area?

We worked through it.

Yes.

We could do it.

Now came the fun part.

“Okay, so how do we get in?”

Steps would work.

A slope would work.

Neither sounded particularly exciting.

We kept coming back to the waterfall. If we were already making the waterfall tall, why not use that height?

And then another rule appeared:

I would never have a child climb a ladder to get onto a slide.

So what if the slide started at the water's edge?

Just three steps up.

A parent could stand beside a child, hold their hand and help them get ready.

Then down the slide into the lagoon—finishing at water level with a big splash.

We wanted it circular, but large enough that adults could enjoy it safely, too.

So we searched until we found the right one.

Right color.

Right dimensions.

Right shape.

And at the bottom, a seat for supervision.

The lagoon became more than another place to swim.

You could slide in, swim across, stop halfway, rest beneath the waterfall, or continue across the water and, at certain times of day, swim beneath the mason wall or the waterfall itself.

It had movement.

It had places to pause.

It had a little adventure built into it.

And then, naturally, we discovered the next problem.

“Wait. How do we get out?”

The answer was stairs.

But finding the right stairs wasn't as simple as saying, “Let's put in some steps.”

We wanted them wide.

Stone.

Flat.

Textured enough to be safe without being slippery.

And substantial enough to belong to the landscape.

We searched for months.

Then we found what they called Chinese granite.

Thirteen pieces.

Four feet wide.

Textured exactly the way we wanted.

They were sitting in a yard.

We bought them.

They arrived the following week.

Sometimes the answer takes months to find.

Sometimes it's sitting there waiting for you to notice it.

“Why is the pool deck just a hallway?”

The pool sits at standing height from the deck.

It would have been easy to make the deck simply a way to get from the house to the lower level.

But why?

If people were going to spend time here, shouldn't the deck itself become part of the gathering?

So we thought about the deck as a room without walls.

A place to sit.

A place to talk.

A place to watch the water.

A place to gather before going down.

The answer wasn't really about decking.

It was about making the journey part of the experience.

“How do we get the plates down to the pool without killing the cook?”

A surprisingly important question.

Food goes down.

Dirty dishes come back.

Glasses go down.

Phones go down.

Music goes down.

And somebody has to carry all of it.

So we placed a low glass coffee table at the sliding glass door.

It became a staging area.

The chefs could prepare food. Helpers could collect plates, bowls and glasses and carry them down to the pool.

After the meal, everything came back to the same place.

Dirty dishes.

Phones.

Music.

Whatever needed to come back upstairs.

It wasn't glamorous.

It was simply smart.

And sometimes the things that make a place work best are the things nobody notices.

“How do we make the family-room stairs simple without making them boring?”

We didn't want steep stairs that simply solved the elevation change.

We wanted a moment.

So there is a small landing.

Steps down to another platform.

Then the stairs divide left and right.

Straight ahead is a plexiglass wall with a view toward the pool.

You leave the family room.

You walk down.

You reach the platform.

You put your hand on the rail.

And you pause.

For just a moment, before choosing left or right:

I am here.

“Why does the screened porch have to be ten feet high?”

Because the house is.

The interior ceilings are ten feet, and the screened porch needed to feel like it belonged to the same architecture—not like an addition tacked onto the back.

We almost lost that one.

The construction crew had started building the wall posts at the wrong height.

We caught it.

The posts had to come out.

The roof had to go up.

Ten feet.

It mattered.

Not because someone standing on the porch was going to measure the ceiling.

Because you feel proportion before you ever think about it.

“How do you put a ceiling on a grotto when there is nothing above it?”

This one required thinking beyond the pool builder.

We brought in architects separately.

Juan saw the problem differently.

His answer was almost wonderfully practical:

Build a parking-lot structure.

Put concrete on top.

The structure becomes the ceiling of the grotto.

And the concrete above becomes the terrace floor.

It didn't need to be polished like the interior of the house.

It could be industrial.

Practical.

Useful outdoors.

And suddenly the grotto wasn't just a hole in the landscape.

It was connected to everything above it.

The architecture had come down to meet the land.

“Can seven men and a crane move a rock two inches?”

The jump rocks arrived.

Then the crane.

Then seven men.

Then the realization that putting enormous pieces of stone where you thought they should go on paper was very different from actually seeing them in place.

One rock horizontal.

One vertical, giving height along the terrace wall.

Another lowered to create a step.

The arrangement had to be imagined and decided in real time.

And then it was about seven o'clock.

The sun was going down.

I was standing in the pool about twenty feet away, looking toward the rocks.

And my eye kept going to the place where someone would naturally jump.

Something wasn't right.

The huge stone needed to move just a couple of inches to the right.

That's all.

Two inches.

They moved it.

And suddenly it was perfect.

They celebrated.

Packed everything up.

And left as the sun went down.

Some decisions can't be made from a drawing.

You have to stand in the water.

“Why not make the people building it part of the experience?”

The pool took two years to build.

At one point, I was so tired of construction that I wanted to put a giant sheet over the window just so I wouldn't have to look at the mud and trash outside.

But the people building it were becoming part of the story.

The masons came from all over—Bolivia, El Salvador, Colombia, Czechia, Russia and elsewhere.

Michael would take blue tape and write the name of their country across the white vinyl siding in the rear yard.

A little recognition.

A little fun.

We'd get out the grill.

Make hamburgers.

Put coolers full of water out for everyone.

And share the experience.

They weren't simply people passing through to build something for us.

For two years, they were part of the place becoming what it was.

“What do you do when the experts say no?”

Sometimes you persist.

The Stafford County code manager had a concern about the swim-up bar.

Someone might fall from a chair into the pool.

I took his hand, walked him to the edge and said:

“Or they can just jump in.”

We wanted them in the pool.

The PebbleTec crew had their own concerns.

They didn't want the white tile along the edges.

They were angry.

There was cussing in another language.

Pieces were being thrown down because things weren't working the way they wanted.

And I just kept saying:

“Let's do this.”

Not loudly.

Not angrily.

Just persistently.

Because sometimes belonging to a place means knowing when to listen—and knowing when to keep going.

“What happens when the construction is finished?”

That turned out to be another question.

The grotto was complete.

The permit was complete.

The construction was complete.

And Juan loved what we had made.

Our architect was invited for a light lunch.

We brought in a small table and three chairs.

We sat inside the grotto in the middle of the afternoon.

We drank wine.

And for a little while, we weren't looking at a construction project anymore.

We were simply sitting inside something that had become beautiful.

Juan later passed away.

And the meaning of the place changed again.

That is how the legacy evolves.

Maybe that's what the pool really is.

Not a collection of features.

Not a checklist.

Not even a finished construction project.

It is the accumulation of questions.

Some serious.

Some practical.

Some completely crazy.

And every once in a while, one of those questions changes the way the whole place feels.

Why?

Why not?

What if?

And then:

Let's do this.