John Reynolds was thrilled when he bought a three-bedroom home for just $19,000.
Admittedly, the property in Texas was very rundown and needed a LOT of improvement but John was determined to turn it into a family home he would be proud of.
The property had been earmarked for demolition but savvy John knew he could make a tidy profit by renovating the home and selling it on - so he set to work.
Three months after beginning his mammoth task, John was left puzzled by the bog that seemed to be a constant feature in one are of the garden.
He’d noticed that even when it hadn’t been raining, the area would be boggy, but with such a huge job on his hands, John just put the garden out of his mind and carried out with renovating the inside of the home.
The previous owner was a hoarder and every room, and the outside space, was filled with junk. There were even 20 feral cats living on the property.
But during a heavy storm, the nurse was stunned to receive a call from one of his neighbours, who told him to check out what the rain had washed away in his garden - a swimming pool.
John said: “I said ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, I don’t have a pool’, and she said ‘yes, you do.”
The rainwater had revealed a massive 32x17ft swimming pool - and John couldn’t believe his luck.
John could see a small amount of concrete edging but because the garden had been so overgrown, he assumed it was simply the edge of a flower bed.
Luckily for John, the bottom of the pool had no cracks and he sent about the painstaking job of restoring it to his former glory.
He said: “I thought ‘whether I live here or sell the house, I can’t leave it like this’.
“It took 11 months just to do the clean-up process and as the shell started showing, I was waiting for a huge crack to surface but that never happened.”
John spent $9,500 restoring the pool and had to pull a raft of rubbish from its depths, such as furniture and even car parts.
But to build something so stunning from scratch would have cost him $150,000.
He said: “It feels like I’ve stumbled across a winning lottery ticket. Never in a million years when I bought the property did I think I would be swimming in my own pool.
“I bought it as a bit of an investment with the intention to do it up and sell it on, but it has yielded so many surprises I don’t know if I can let it go.
“My friends and I are in it every day for hours on end now. You couldn’t wish to find a bigger reward in your back garden.”
And after all of his amazing discoveries, John has shelved his plans to sell the house, which is now worth $210,000 and has now made it his home.
