Davis Islands · 2024
Davis Islands remodel
A 1991 pool with failed plaster and a screen cage that blocked the water view. Same shell, everything else replaced.
The build
The shell was sound, which is usually the case with a well-built gunite pool from the early nineties. Everything attached to it was finished: plaster crazed and stained, a single-speed pump, and a screen enclosure with a frame every four feet directly across the only view worth having.
We chipped out the interior, cut in a new raised spa at the deep end, retiled, and replaced the cage with a panoramic enclosure that carries the same span on two posts instead of six. The deck went over the existing slab in travertine after we cut relief joints to stop the old cracks telegraphing through.
Remodels are more constrained than new builds and often more satisfying. Nothing about the footprint changed and the yard is unrecognisable.
One detail
Cutting a spa into an existing shell
Tying new gunite into a 33-year-old shell means drilling and epoxying dowels into the old structure so the two move together, then shotcreting against a cured surface rather than fresh steel. Done badly it cracks at the joint within a season. It is the single most technical thing in a remodel and it is entirely invisible afterwards.
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