The whole inside of your pool
Complete Pool Remodeling in Southern California
Interior finish, waterline tile, coping and structure — the whole inside of your pool, in one project, by one family crew. “Complete remodel” means two very different things in this industry, and the difference is tens of thousands of dollars. This page tells you which one you are asking for.
(951) 419-4206Free estimates. Financing available. Licensed — CSLB #1148412.
Run by Oscar Retana, twenty-one years on Southern California pools, with his sons on the same crew. Fixed price in writing before anything is demolished.
Where we work most: Riverside, Redlands, Hemet, Murrieta, Corona and Anaheim — and across five counties: Moreno Valley, Temecula, Menifee, Rancho Cucamonga, Ontario, Fontana, Chino Hills, Irvine, Orange, Pasadena, Glendora, Whittier, Carlsbad, Oceanside, Vista and everywhere in between.
Oscar Retana and his sons — the crew that will be in your backyard. CA’s Finest & Quality Pool Plastering Inc, Riverside County.
The word everybody uses differently
What a complete pool remodel actually includes
“They call asking for a complete remodel. Then you find out what they mean is the pool looks old and they want it to stop looking old.”
Search this and you will get quoted two completely different projects under the same name.
One is a full backyard rebuild. The pool, plus new decking, new equipment, lighting, water features, sometimes a whole redesign of the yard around it. It is a real project and it is priced accordingly — and it is the version almost every big published figure is describing.
The other is the pool itself, completely redone. The interior surface, the waterline tile, the coping, and any structural work inside the shell. Everything you look at and swim in, new. That is a different project at a different number.
Most people asking for a complete remodel want the second one. A lot of them end up being quoted the first, because nobody separated them at the estimate.
We do the pool. That is what we are good at and it is what twenty-one years of this has been — more than a hundred pools, with Oscar and his sons on every one of them. If what you actually want is the backyard, we will say so before you are three quotes deep.
And if the budget is what is holding it up, ask about financing. It is worth knowing the options before you decide on the scope rather than after.
The four pieces
What is in a complete pool remodel with us
Four pieces. You can do all of them or some of them, and we will tell you honestly which ones your pool actually needs.
The interior surface
The old finish chipped out — not covered over — the shell prepared, and a new surface installed. White plaster, quartz, or a mini pebble and StoneScapes finish.
This is the piece that decides how long the whole remodel lasts. Plaster gives you eight to twelve years; pebble fifteen to twenty.
always part of it
Waterline tile
The band at the waterline, stripped and replaced. Ceramic, porcelain, glass or mosaic.
It comes off during the interior demolition anyway, so this is the cheapest it will ever be to replace. And it is the single most visible change per dollar in the whole project.
almost always worth it
Coping
The cap you walk on and sit on. Poured concrete, travertine, light limestone, brick or precast — and the expansion joint underneath it reset with fresh mastic.
The one decision here that people regret is heat. Concrete gets hot under an Inland Empire sun; pale stone stays cool. Worth thirty seconds standing on a sample before you choose.
optional, and worth asking about
Structure inside the shell
A Baja shelf or tanning ledge, benches, extra steps, or raising part of a deep end nobody uses.
If you are already draining and demolishing, this is the moment it costs least to change. Doing it as its own project two years from now means paying for the drain and the mobilization twice.
only if you want it
What we do not do, so you are not surprised: full decking replacement, landscaping and hardscape beyond the coping, or backyard design. Those are real trades with real specialists and we are not one of them.
What we do do, and people do not expect: the plumbing set into the shell — skimmers, returns, drain covers and autofills — because a drained pool is the only window when any of it is reachable. That is its own service. Pumps, heaters and control panels out on the equipment pad are a different specialty and we will tell you so instead of taking the job.
And we build pools from the ground up. New pool construction is its own service and its own page. It is a completely different project from a remodel, though — if you already have a shell that is sound, remodeling it costs a fraction of replacing it, and we will say which of the two your yard actually calls for.
Not sure a complete remodel is what you need?
Some pools only need the surface. Some only need the tile. There is a table on our services page that matches what you are seeing to what it usually is — including when the answer is that you do not need us yet.
Our testimonials
Real experiences. Real results.
Hear it from the people whose backyards we worked in. Then read the reviews straight from our Google profile, below.
A customer on how the job went, start to finish.
Another customer, another backyard in Southern California.
Real reviews from real clients
Every one of them written by somebody whose pool we worked on, in Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, Los Angeles or San Diego county. Several are in Spanish, because a good share of our customers are.
We would rather you read them before you call us than after.
The part nobody explains at the estimate
Why the order matters, and why doing it in phases costs more
A pool remodel has a sequence that is not negotiable. Fighting it is the most expensive mistake people make with this project.
Everything happens with the pool empty. The drain, the setup, the equipment on site, the crew mobilized — those costs exist once whether you are doing one thing or four.
And the sequence runs one way. Structure first, because it changes the shape. Then tile and coping, because they define where the waterline sits and the plaster finishes against them. Then the interior surface, last, because it is the final layer and it is what everything else gets sealed into. Then the fill and two weeks of start-up.
Which means: if you replaster this year and decide next year you want the tile done, the tile job requires draining the pool again and cutting into a surface you just paid for. Not only do you pay the setup twice, you compromise a finish that was a year old.
Same with structure. Adding a Baja shelf to a pool that was resurfaced last spring means chipping into that new surface to tie the shelf in, then patching a finish that will never match.
This is not a sales argument for doing more. It is the reason we will ask you at the estimate what you might want in three years, and then tell you honestly whether it is worth including now or whether it genuinely can wait.
Sometimes the right answer is to do the plaster only, because the tile is fine and the coping has another decade in it. We say that too.
The sequence
- 1. Drain and demolition
- 2. Structural work, if any
- 3. Coping
- 4. Waterline tile
- 5. Interior finish
- 6. Fill and two-week start-up
Each step has to be finished before the next one starts, and some need cure time you cannot compress. That is why a complete remodel is two to three weeks rather than one.
What it costs
How much a complete pool remodel costs
We quote by linear feet of perimeter — the distance around the edge of your pool. Every piece of the project is priced the same way and listed separately on your estimate, so you can see exactly what each decision adds.
What a complete remodel starts at
From $7,800
The floor is the surface itself. Demolition and a regular plaster finish starts around $7,800; the same pool in mini pebble starts closer to $10,500. That is where a project begins, not where it ends — a complete remodel adds the waterline tile, the coping and any structural work on top of it.
Which is exactly why this one cannot be priced from a web page. Two pools the same size can be a very different project depending on how many of the four pieces you want and what you pick for each. Some people do the surface and the tile and leave the coping for later. Some do everything. Both are complete remodels to the person who owns the pool.
These are approximate starting figures for orientation only. They are not a quote and they are not a price promise. We do not publish a rate per foot, because the honest answer is that it is not the same in every city — and a number on a web page that turns into a different number at your house helps nobody. You get one fixed number in writing after Oscar has come out and measured it, free, with each piece listed separately so you can see what every decision adds, and it does not move afterwards.
Financing is available. If the number is the thing standing between you and the pool you want, ask us about it when you call. It is worth knowing your options before you decide on the scope, not after — plenty of people end up including the tile and the coping in the same project, instead of cutting into a brand new surface two years later, simply because they asked early.
Why the figures you see published are so far apart
Search this and you will find two very different sets of numbers, and both of them are honest for what they describe.
The low ones describe a plain replaster — the interior surface and nothing else. If that is genuinely all your pool needs, we will tell you so and quote you a replaster.
The high ones describe a full backyard rebuild — new decking, new equipment, lighting, water features, often the yard redesigned around the pool. Those are real projects and they are priced accordingly.
We sit in between, deliberately. More than a replaster, because a complete remodel is the whole inside of the pool. Less than a backyard rebuild, because that is not what we do. If your pool is tired but your deck and equipment are fine, that middle is exactly where you belong — and it is the part of this market nobody advertises clearly.
The estimate is free and the price is fixed in writing before anything is demolished. If we open something up and find a problem in the shell, you see a photo and approve the fix before we touch it.
Written guarantee on our workmanship
If something fails because of our workmanship within the first year, we come back and repair it. No cost, no argument — and it is in writing before we ever start, not promised verbally at the door.
The honest comparison
Choosing between a seventy-year-old company and us
You will see firms in this market that have been remodeling pools since the 1950s, with hundreds of reviews and tens of thousands of pools behind them. That is genuinely impressive and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
Here is the honest way to think about the difference, because it is not about who is better.
A large company gives you process. Scheduling departments, multiple crews, showrooms, longer warranties, and the financial depth to still be there in fifteen years. If your project is big and complicated, or you want a single company handling the pool and the yard and the equipment together, that is a real advantage and you should take it.
What you generally do not get is the same people. The person who sells you the job is not the person who does it. The crew that demolishes is not always the crew that plasters. That is not a criticism — it is simply how a company running many jobs at once has to work.
We are the other thing. Oscar quotes your pool and Oscar is in your backyard, with his sons. The same three or four people are there from the day the old surface comes out to the day the water goes back in. You have his number and he sends you an update every day the crew is on site.
For a pool remodel — which is one shell, one crew, and a few weeks — that tends to matter more than a scheduling department. For a full backyard rebuild, it might not.
Ask both of us the same question and compare the answers: who exactly will be in my yard, and will it be the same people every day?
Questions worth asking every quote
- Is the old interior surface coming out, or going over?
- Which exact finish, and who makes it?
- Is the expansion joint included with the coping?
- Who is physically doing the work, and is it the same crew throughout?
- What happens, in writing, if you find a problem in the shell?
- What is the warranty and is it on paper?
- Is there financing, and what does it actually cost?
Ask us these too. If we cannot answer them in a sentence each, you should not hire us either.
What happens, in what order
How a complete pool remodel goes
Four steps on site, plus the two weeks after we leave that decide how long it all lasts.
Step 1
We measure and scope it
Free, at your house. We measure the perimeter, look at the shell, the tile, the coping and the joint, and bring samples you can hold — and stand on, in the sun.
Step 2
Fixed price in writing
Line by line: every piece, its material, its linear feet, what is included and what is not. You keep a copy before anybody picks up a chipping hammer. Ask about financing here, before the scope is locked.
Step 3
Drain, demolish, inspect
The old surface, tile and coping come off and leave in our truck. The shell underneath gets looked at properly, and anything we find gets a photo and your approval before it is covered.
Step 4
Build it back in order
Structure, then coping, then tile, then the interior finish — each one finished before the next begins, with the cure time each needs.
Step 5 — fill and start-up
We start the fill and do not stop it, then walk you through the brushing and the chemistry for the first two weeks. A new surface is curing while the pool fills, and that fortnight does more for its life than anything else you will ever do.
How long a complete remodel takes
Interior finish only: about one week.
Interior plus tile and coping: two to three weeks, because each stage has to finish before the next starts and some need cure time that cannot be rushed.
With structural work or a permit: longer, and the plan check timeline belongs to your building department rather than to us. We tell you which one yours is at the estimate, and we would rather say three weeks and finish in two.
Real work, real results
Recent complete pool remodels
No stock photography — every project shown here is one of ours, in a real backyard around the Inland Empire.
off your first remodeling or new construction project
For every new customer, on top of whatever the quote already says — your first pool remodeling or new pool construction project with us. Veterans and active-duty military, always. And ask about financing while you are at it. Just mention it when you call.
Where we work
Complete pool remodeling in Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, Los Angeles and San Diego counties
We are based in Riverside County. The pools we remodel were mostly built between the late seventies and the nineties — which in this part of California is an enormous number of backyards, all reaching the same point at the same time.
Riverside County
Riverside, Hemet, Murrieta, Corona, Moreno Valley, Temecula, Menifee, Perris, Lake Elsinore, Eastvale
San Bernardino County
Redlands, Rancho Cucamonga, Ontario, Fontana, Chino Hills, Upland, Rialto, Highland, Yucaipa
Orange County
Anaheim, Irvine, Orange, Yorba Linda, Fullerton, Tustin, Brea, Villa Park
Los Angeles County
Pasadena, Glendora, Whittier, Claremont, San Dimas, La Verne, Arcadia, Covina
San Diego County
Carlsbad, Oceanside, Vista, San Marcos, Escondido, Encinitas, Fallbrook
Before you compare quotes
Complete pool remodeling questions we get asked
The first five are the ones Google itself shows when you search complete pool remodeling in Southern California.
How much does it cost to remodel a pool in California?
It depends entirely on what “remodel” means in your quote, which is why the figures you find published are so far apart. There are three different projects hiding under one word.
A plain replaster is the interior surface and nothing else. With us that starts around $7,800, or closer to $10,500 in mini pebble.
A complete remodel of the pool itself adds the waterline tile, the coping and any structural work on top of that. It starts from the same floor and moves with how many of those pieces you want, which is why we list each one separately on the estimate instead of handing you a single number you cannot take apart.
A full backyard project also replaces decking, equipment and often the yard around the pool. That is a different scope and a different kind of contractor, and it is what almost every big published figure is describing.
Those are approximate starting figures for orientation only — not a quote and not a price promise. Before you compare any two quotes, make sure they are describing the same one of those three. And if the number is what is holding it up, ask about financing — it is available.
Can you remodel an existing pool?
Yes — that is the whole business. A gunite or shotcrete pool can be taken back to its shell and rebuilt inside: new interior finish, new waterline tile, new coping, and structural changes like a Baja shelf or a shallower deep end.
What you cannot really change is the footprint and the basic shape without moving into new construction, which we also do — but it is a different project at a different number. Within the existing shell, almost everything you look at and touch can be new.
Pools from the late seventies through the nineties are our most common job, and most of them are on their first or second interior surface. Those remodel beautifully.
How much does it cost to replaster a 15,000 gallon pool?
Gallons are the wrong unit, and it is worth knowing why before you compare quotes. The work happens on the walls and floor, so what matters is the perimeter — not the volume. Two 15,000-gallon pools can have quite different perimeters depending on shape and depth.
That said, demolition and a regular white plaster finish on a typical pool starts around $7,800, and the same pool in mini pebble starts closer to $10,500. A smaller pool than average sits at the lower end of that. Approximate starting figures only — not a quote and not a price promise.
Add waterline tile and coping if you are doing a complete remodel rather than just the surface. The real number comes after we measure it, and the visit is free.
How much does it cost to resurface a pool?
Resurfacing is one piece of a complete remodel — the interior surface on its own, without the tile and coping.
We quote it by perimeter, and on a typical pool it starts around $7,800 in white plaster or closer to $10,500 in mini pebble or StoneScapes. Approximate starting figures only — not a quote and not a price promise. We do not publish a rate per foot, because it is not the same in every city.
If your tile and coping are still sound, resurfacing alone is a perfectly good decision and we will quote exactly that.
Will the remodel need a permit?
It depends on your city, and we find out before anything starts. Requirements are not the same in every jurisdiction, and they are not always the same for a house inside city limits and one in an unincorporated part of the same county — some cities ask for a permit on work that others treat as a repair.
What is consistent is that structural work is reviewed: changing the shape of the shell, modifying the depth or reworking plumbing or electrical goes in front of your building department with plans and staged inspections.
We check what applies to your address and give it to you in writing, with the plan check timeline separate from the construction timeline. That stage belongs to the building department, not to us, and we would rather you know which part of the schedule is ours.
Do you offer financing?
Yes. Ask about it when you call and we will walk you through the options.
Do it before you decide on the scope rather than after — it is a different conversation when you know what is possible. On this project in particular it tends to change the answer, because the tile and coping cost a fraction now and a fortune two years from now, once there is a new surface to cut into.
Do I have to do everything at once?
No, and we will tell you when you should not. If your coping has another decade in it, leave it.
But understand what phasing costs. Everything happens with the pool drained, and that setup exists once whether you do one piece or four. More importantly, the sequence runs one way: tile and coping go in before the interior surface, because the plaster finishes against them.
So replastering this year and retiling next year means draining again and cutting into a surface you just paid for. The tile job itself is not much more expensive, but the finish you compromise is.
The pieces that genuinely can wait are the ones outside the shell. Inside it, if you are going to do it in the next few years, doing it now is almost always cheaper.
Will the pool look completely different?
Yes, more than most people expect — and the reason is usually the tile rather than the plaster.
A new interior surface makes the water clean and bright. But the waterline band is the strip your eye actually lands on, and changing it from a dated eighties ceramic to a glass or mosaic band changes the whole character of the pool for a fraction of the project cost.
If there is one place to spend a little more in a complete remodel, that is it.
Can I use the pool at all during the remodel?
No. The pool is drained for the whole project, which is about one week for a surface-only job and two to three weeks for a complete remodel.
So it is worth deciding when you can most afford to lose it, and then booking that slot early rather than calling the week you want to start. We will tell you honestly how far out we are when you call, and we would rather give you a date we can hold than the date you want to hear.
Do you do the decking and the equipment too?
The coping, yes — that is the cap around the edge of the pool and it is part of a complete remodel.
Full decking replacement, hardscape and landscaping, no. Those are separate trades and we would rather tell you that than take on work we are not set up for.
The plumbing set into the shell, yes. Skimmers, returns, drain covers and autofills are their own service, and a drained pool is the only window when any of it is reachable — so if it needs doing, this is the project to do it in. Pumps, heaters and control panels out on the equipment pad are a different specialty, and we will say so rather than take the job.
Is the work guaranteed?
Yes — a written one-year warranty on the work, handed to you with the paperwork rather than promised verbally.
We are a licensed California contractor, CSLB #1148412. Look that number up at cslb.ca.gov and check the status yourself in about thirty seconds. We would encourage you to do that with every contractor who quotes you, including us.
¿Hablan español?
Sí. Oscar y su equipo hablan español. Llame, escriba o mande fotos en el idioma que prefiera y le contestamos en el mismo.
Get your free complete remodel estimate
Send a photo of the pool and tell us roughly how big it is. We will tell you what it needs, what it does not, and what the whole thing would run — then come out and put a fixed price on it. Ask about financing while you are at it.