I learned something new this month. that is, I am capable of building something major with my own two hands! and you know what? It feels great!
I spent pretty much every minute of sunlight this last week dedicating my energy towards this huge project. I wasn't sure I had it in me, but if this week has shown me anything it's that I'm extremely capable when I put my mind to something.
the urgency of the completion of this project you may ask? I had promised it to my husband as our christmas present to ourselves (from me) this year.
it’s important that you know a task this daunting requires planning, patience and perseverance! in this blog I share my experience building out my dream jacuzzi surround, vibes included.
to make sure this project turned out a success, I knew I needed to figure out a way to draw this up that made sense to me, but also to my dad as he helped me build the structural portion of this build (shoutout dad!)
I hopped on my ipad and started sketching out what was in my head mutliple different ways, but nothing was really clicking! I ended up deciding that unfortunately, I had to resort to math. so I utilized a grid and decided to draw it to the dimensions as best I could.
so I basically started by taking a few measurements of my jacuzzi and getting that all lined up on a grid, then I decided what I'd want my shallowest depth for seating to be, and worked outwards to figure out the dimensions around the rest of the surround.
once I had that roughed out, I started plugging in where I wanted my big support beams (4x4's) to be located for the most ideal structure (1 inch = 1 square on my grid). after that I plugged in where my 2x4's would go and started plugging in measurements so that when we went to build we had a pretty solid guideline.
once the design was complete and the supply list created, the project began. I was very anxious at first because I wasn't sure my drawing made sense to anyone but me, but also I was worried I'd miscalculated something and the project just wouldn't work at all.
we drained the jacuzzi, I gave it a good scrub, and off we went on the build.
so, I thought the process would be quick and easy and I would have results in basically a day. then reality set in. this is a build out from scratch, and the first day was purely assembling the framing of the piece as a whole. when I say my patio is uneven, I mean it is UNEVEN. every measurement in order to keep it level was different. every. single. one.
I essentially used 4x4's as my support, with 2x4's laid out in between them on the base, and 2x4's laid out on top of them so the upper pieces would have something to be attached to. the top pieces I ended up going with 2x6's (I wanted something thinner, but my dad convinced me in the long run this would be much more sturdy, especially with people sitting on it and future little people standing on it and such).
I used 6 inch wood screws as well as 3 inch wood screws to attach everything together. I chose not to attach this to my house, as it sure was not going anywhere with how heavy it was and I just did not find it necessary, especially with the thought of eventually selling the house I didn't want to have to repair anything down the line!
my next semi-issue was that I had counted out and measured the longest length of all my pieces for the top layer (mostly to ensure I bought enough wood!), but that ended up changing a bit because I calculated for 4 inch wide planks and we ended up going for 6 inch planks because it looked nicer. in the end, it wasn't a huge deal, my measurements were only slightly off and I whipped out my jigsaw to cut down the outer pieces to be flush with the siding.
over the course of the next day I laid out all the top pieces, and battled with building doors into the sides so that we could use all the internal negative space as storage for the pool chemicals and equipment.
at this point, everything was assembled and it was just a matter of figuring out finishes, waiting for shipments to come in, and doing nitty gritty tasks (like wood filler, sanding, wood conditioning, staining, sealing, painting, etc!)
I took a scrap piece of wood on over to lowes and had one of the associates test out a bunch of stains for me, as I knew what vibe I was going for, but I wasn't sure how the stains would pull on my wood. shoutout tiktok for that tip, no longer will I have to go to lowes 5 times over to get a stain color right!
after I got all those steps knocked out, I took a step back and decided it needed something a little bit more to pull it all together. so I slept on it, and dreamt up a mini mural to pull it all together.
I popped into my art shed, picked out a couple of colors from my stash, and got to work. this was the absolute best thing I could have done to tie it all together, I especially loved painting down onto the bench portion to mend the two spaces into one!
it finally felt like there was light at the end of the tunnel!
the time had come for finishing touches! I popped in some pillows (repurposing some extra that were living in my guest bedroom!), planted some plants, got them hung, put some hooks on the wall for towels to hang, and I was done!
