After about a month of work, Olivia Kendall says she’s finished turning an old motorboat into a backyard pool. “It looked very beautiful. It was obviously very old,” Kendall said of the boat. “But I figured if he could keep the water out, he could probably keep the water in.” Since buying her home in 2017, she said she has been working on renovating the property. She initially looked to stock pools—which use shallow galvanized steel tanks typically found on livestock farms—for her home, as they’ve recently become a trendy swimming pool alternative. He was discouraged, however, by the high cost of tanks and found a listing for an old Mercury model “runabout” boat from Chestnut Canoe Company on Facebook Marketplace for $300. Olivia Kendall converted an old Mercury model from the Chestnut Canoe Company, shown above right in a catalog, into a pool for her backyard. (Wooden Canoe Museum) “On a whim, I bought it and the gentleman brought it straight to the back yard and I just started working on it.” She started telling people about the project to keep herself accountable, she said, and started putting the pool together. The first step was to choose a place for the boat to live in her yard. He then leveled the ground below and made a frame to hold the boat steady. Kendall said she turned to Facebook Marketplace, where she found some used equipment, including a pool pump, sand filter and a seawater chlorinator — which creates chlorine gas from salt that dissolves in water — to begin transforming the boat’s cockpit into a pool.
Complete with waterfall
“Going off the beaten path allows you to meet interesting people who have knowledge [about] those items,” he explained, adding that the process was made much easier by the help he received from vendors he bought equipment from. Then it was a matter of covering the deck of the boat with a pool liner, drilling holes in the boat’s hull to feed the pool pipes and adding a waterfall fitting that funnels the water back into the pool once it passes through the filters. Kendall said her daughter, Adele, has spent much of the summer at the pool since it was completed. (Dylan Jones/CBC) Some finishing touches included a bucket at the back of the pool, which she uses to store drinks for herself and her three-year-old daughter Adele, who has added her own personal touch to the “backboat” with a variety of her toys. “We needed something small enough for her that was safe for her to get into. And I needed something I can relax in too,” Kendall said. Her daughter has been spending as much time as she can in the pool, and other kids in the neighborhood are also big fans of the project, she said.
Landscaping and lighting
There are still some things that need to be added to the boat, Kendall said. He plans to landscape around the hull and add lights to bring a tropical atmosphere. She called the pool a “prototype” and plans to teach herself how to build a permanent base for the boat once the swimming season is over. He got a quick lesson in everything from chemistry to construction, he said, adding that he recommends going the boat route for people thinking about adding a pool to their homes, especially through the market. “It forced me to learn how to do things on my own and be resourceful and trick my friends [into] he comes and picks things up for me,” Kendall said with a laugh.
