Black and White

First it was Bright and White.

Now it is Black and White.

Heck, even our cats are Black and White!

But this entry isn't about our cats. It's about the big black transformation of our pond.

There it was, after two and a half years of hard work, and after just two and a half days work by the fibreglasser, the pond is now fibreglassed - waterproof and black. And what a wonderful moment it was when I got home and found the pond and small water feature are finally black.

Look Ma, no creases!

And don't you just love professionals? You hire them and they get things done in such a short amount of time. So quick as well too, especially on this case. If we fibreglassed the pond ourselves it would have probably taken us an entire week or two to complete the task, being the after work DIY-ers that we are. Although we would have never done the fibreglassing ourselves anyway, it's one of those jobs that is best left to the professionals. Hence that's why we got John to do the deed.

John (facing away, right) and his assistant fibreglassing away

John is a seasoned pro and has been doing this for many, many years. And he is a long time koi keeper too as well as a fellow member of our local koi club, hence fully understanding the special needs a koi pond demands. With his expertise well known in the circuit, he has been commissioned several times to fibreglass ponds for show gardens, four of which were for the Chelsea Flower Show.

Getting the pond waterproof is such a huge turning point for the project. After all, if it ain't waterproof, it ain't a pond! It feels great that we are actually through to this very important stage and now we can move on to the remaining stages.

There is still a lot of prep work to the interior of pond itself before we can fill it up with water (once or twice before fishes are introduced), including the installation of the filters first. Otherwise it will just flood the filtration house. But for now we can start finishing off the exterior part like putting on the coping stone edging, etc.

Gaz doing some measurement before angle grinding some of the sandstone slabs.

And you'll need some cement to fix them in place.

And there's the small water feature too which was easy enough to finish off. A few evenings after work and a few hours over the weekend and it is mostly finished. All we need to do now is to install its own filtration and it will be up and running shortly.

For months it just sat there accumulating rainwater

Once the fibreglass has dried, sanded down, washed; coping stones have been cemented into place

And once the mortar has dried, it was blended away inside with a black pond paint. Just have to paint the outside white now!

Sometimes I feel we move at such a slow pace. Maybe because we're both overly meticulous at times? I think it's more of a case of mentally wanting to achieve more in a limited amount of time, more than realistic but I think we're not doing bad at all. I had a quick look back at our photo archives, of what we have done exactly a year ago and here it was:

How it was, exactly a year ago.

So glad to finally see the back of all that clay!

I have been looking at everything recently, pinching myself that we are actually at this stage. And that I have to think about relatively minor things now like lighting, outdoor speakers, etc. Rather than just endless digging and cementing.

Hard work yes but overall what an enjoyable journey. And I'm enjoying things even more now that we are almost there.

Mark :-)

Posted in: Cats , exotic garden , garden blog , Koi , koi blog , Pond build , Tropical Garden