Hot Tub Time Machine

So almost a week ago I promised pictures of our functional - whoop, whoop! - hot tub. Thanks to 9 days of migraining (yes, it's a verb now), I am just getting you the pics now. My apologies. But I must caution you: don't get too excited. Perhaps more than anything else in the house, besides the driftwood stone fireplace in the living room, the hot tub transports you to a bygone era.

Let's approach this relic of the 80's slowly...

Okay, some of the framing is a little loose, but it's nothing a nail gun couldn't fix in a nanosecond.

The inside is in decent shape. There's a sweet tiled border that really shows the tub's age, but hey, the post is not called "Hot Tub Time Machine" for nothing.

The tile carries over onto the outside of the tub.

But wait, it gets worse...

And worse.

I'm guessing you don't want to go for a soak right about now do you? Well, it's too bad because the views from the hot tub at night are amazing; you can see the twinkling city lights, watch airplanes land and take off, or just gaze at the stars and the mountain ranges in the background. (Our almost-as-old-as-our-hot-tub camera couldn't capture a clear night picture to show you. I'll get back to you once we upgrade in about a month.) It's pretty darn relaxing, even when it's too foggy to see any stars, planes, or lit-up houses.

Enter Phase II. We'll start by nailing these boards back into place,

and then we will work on the tiled corners of the tub. The hubs, a lover of all things wood, wants to create some kind of design with different kinds of wood; I want to retile it in something less offensive. Whatever we do, we want it to be on the cheap. We don't think this guy is going to be around for much longer, and we have big plans to rip out the tub and deck (and jackhammer up all that concrete underneath) in order to extend the grass throughout the back yard. So basically, we need a solution that will last about a year. Something good enough that people wouldn't be afraid to set their drinks or towels down on the edge of the tub, but not so nice that we'll never want to get rid of it. Stay tuned for what we come up with.

Oh, in case you were wondering what Phase I consisted of, it went as follows: we used a shop vac to suck up the rotting acorns and stagnant water in the tub. Yummy. Then we used a diluted bleach solution to clean it, making sure to scrub the surface really well thanks to said rotting acorns. We then rinsed off the bleach, shop vacced that up, and once we were certain it was clean, filled it with water and chemicals according to the package directions. Hazzah! (Oops, I guess that one's a little further back in time than the 80's.)