HGTV’s “Property Brothers” dove into unknown territory when they added a pool to their Las Vegas home.
“That’s the first pool I’ve ever done from scratch, so it was a learning experience for me,” said Jonathan Scott, the contractor/builder of the duo. “I’ve bought a lot of houses that have had pools that needed maintenance. But I’ve never built one from scratch.”
Jonathan and Realtor brother Drew Scott recently visited Atlanta to promote their new book, “Dream Home: The Property Brothers’ Ultimate Guide to Finding & Fixing Your Perfect Home,” at the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta.
The brothers’ infinity-edge pool features the only commercial-grade water slide at a private residence in Las Vegas. It also includes a 165-inch, 12-foot-wide outdoor movie screen, swim-up bar and a sunken, built-in seating area.
“The main thing for me is that anything I design, I try to design it with just a little bit of pizzazz, something that’s going to allow the family to stay home and enjoy the space as opposed to necessarily having to always go to a park or something,” Jonathan said. “I put in the water slide, and now all my friends’ kids come over and use the slide. They use it more than I do.”
While most homeowners may not be able to afford a commercial-grade water slide, he offers tips for giving pool areas pop.
“I did an outdoor movie screen, but it doesn’t have to be as big and elaborate as the one that I have,” Jonathan said. “You can get a pretty inexpensive manual screen and then you can pull it down when you need to use it, and you can put it up and out of the way when you don’t need it.”
Addressing the saltwater vs. traditional chlorine pool choice, the brothers opted for saltwater at their home.
“I’m not big on chemicals and I like to try to do things as natural as possible,” Jonathan said. “At the end of the day, with all the information I had, it seemed like the right choice. The one thing that I have discovered is that as soon as you get out of the saltwater, much like the ocean, you definitely want a shower.”
He also advises against homeowners building a pool solely to make their home more attractive to potential buyers.
“There have been some clients who have said in order to compete, I’m going to put a pool in and then sell the house. That’s a terrible idea,” he said. “We usually find that if you put a pool in and you have to sell right away, you would only make back about 50 percent of the value of that pool. So you want to make sure if you’re putting a pool in, it’s something that you’re going to get lots of use out of.”
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