We have had an ongoing discussion about getting a hot tub for about 10 years or so. We are very active with golfing and working out so it would be nice to relax and soothe our muscles. For some reason, I have always had an excuse to delay the purchase. Something like “we don’t have room at this house” or “we don’t have the money right now.”
Our last house not only had a deck suitable for a tub and the wiring already done so I had to get creative with my excuses. Eventually I came up with “it will be too close to the property line” and “it will be too noisy for the neighbours.” Somehow I got away with it because you know – men pick their battles too.
Some day I will bore you with a post on how and why this lattice and pergola were built. We are happy with how it came out and did enjoy entertaining out here.
Fast forward to 2014. Not only do we have more space, peace and quiet than we will ever need, our friends gave us a screaming deal for an almost new and barely used hot tub. I knew it was time to give in.
This area on the patio is an obvious spot for the hot tub because of the concrete and its proximity to the kitchen doors. I would have been happy to site the tub at the back of the house but the septic field is in the way.
This trellis has an old honeysuckle growing up and over it which helps shield this area from the road. I will make sure the honeysuckle doesn’t get damaged by bending it back and protecting it while we rebuild its support. The road doesn’t get alot of traffic but I still want this area to be more private. The plan is to rebuild this trellis with the same lattice fencing and pergola as our last house and take it all the way around to the little pond on the corner of the patio and over to the stairs. We are going to end up rebuilding all the standing structures in this area: trellis, pergola over stairs and the arbour coming into the patio. We will get into the wiring and other site prep issues later. And I will post photos as we get underway so it makes sense.
We have a grassy area off the patio that will be better used for dining and entertaining. We do have a lot of people over in the summer so I would like to replace this grass with well-packed decomposed granite for easy maintenance. And it would be nice to have a firepit here too. The stairs are hard to see here but they go down towards the road and are the width of the pergola with the flag pole. We will have to take the arbour on the far right down to get the hot tub into this area. There is a rose growing on it that I want to save so I will have to bend it back and protect it too.
Here is some video I took as the guys from Calais Spas and Billiards in Nanaimo prepped the hot tub for transport.
Half an hour later, here is the tub being delivered right to our garage. Turns out these guys knew exactly where we lived because they maintain two other tubs on this road. I guess we have joined the club! And yes, it was snowing lightly that day.
Hopefully by the summer all the hard work will be done and we will be enjoying our hot tub, smelling the honeysuckle and enjoying the view of the climbing roses on the new pergola. Wish us luck!
