Jason Hughes, President/CEO
River Pools of Central Virginia
Warsaw, Va.
Charles Lawson/The Highlander Studios
A debate has long taken place among creative types about whether constraints help or hamper artistic endeavors. Builder/designer Jason Hughes falls squarely in the first camp.
“I think if we’re not challenged to be creative, we tend to go with the path of least resistance, and a lot of times, we miss opportunities,” says Hughes, president of River Pools of Central Virginia.
This project serves as an example.
The homeowners were happy with their existing outdoor kitchen and multi-tiered patio, so they wanted a fiberglass poolscape that would fit seamlessly with those elements, along with a new pool house that held a restroom and generous storage space.
The pool needed to be large enough for entertaining and lap swimming. They also requested a tanning shelf for added entertainment space. So it would be a substantial project.
But Hughes discovered that much of the backyard fell within a floodplain, taking it off limits.
“We thought it was really going to compromise the design,” he says. “But what I enjoyed most was working with [the client] to produce something that actually turned out to be better for them than it would have been otherwise.”
By shifting the pool to the right side of the property and positioning it perpendicular to the home, Hughes was able to convert what had been an unusable portion of the yard into a beautiful space, and certain spots became more intimate.
The designer also included a wall with sheet falls on one side of the pool to accounted for a grade change. On the opposite side, a 4-foot retaining wall includes a seat wall and recessed steps to a sunken patio space.
At one end of the waterscape stands the Craftsman-inspired pool house, while a pergola structure with rain curtain balances it on the other end.
For the materials palette, Hughes drew from the contemporary craftsman style home, which included stone veneer on the interior and exterior, precast concrete paving stones and retaining walls, and an existing pergola over a spa.
Hughes raised the fiberglass tanning shelf to accommodate a spillway. An automatic cover is concealed with a stone cover lid.
