Building a Pool in Fredericksburg: Leann Rominger Scott of Staycation Pools and Outdoors

Leann Rominger Scott spent ten years managing custom home builds in Austin before she started building pools. Today she runs Staycation Pools and Outdoors from the Stonewall area outside Fredericksburg. In Episode 4 she talked with Steven Butcher and Ryan Rendon about how a pool fits into a custom home build, what clients should expect, why she moved to Fredericksburg, and the new racquet center she’s helping bring to town.

From custom homes to pools

Leann grew up in Waco, graduated from UT and taught school for eight years while coaching on the side. A gym member who was a custom home builder hired her, first to shadow him and then as a project manager. She worked for him for ten years on custom homes in Austin neighborhoods like Tarrytown, Old Enfield, Spanish Oaks and Barton Creek.

Nearly every one of those houses had a pool, and finding a reliable pool builder was, in her words, “a nightmare.” When she kept asking her husband if he knew anyone, he told her to start her own company because she was already doing the work. That became Staycation Pools. She has never done any marketing; all of her work has come by word of mouth.

How a pool fits into a custom home build

If you’re building a new home with a pool, Leann’s schedule runs differently from a pool added to an existing house. On a custom home, her crew comes in and gets the pool to gunite, and then she may not come back for eight months, when it’s time for tile, coping, plaster and water. For someone already living in their house, a pool goes much faster. She calls the custom home process “chunky.”

She also described the structural work people don’t see. On one job she had fifteen 28-foot holes in a backyard, each needing a rebar cage and concrete, which meant weeks of plywood, cones and tape to keep the family’s kids safe.

Her crew is unusual for a pool builder. Her lead has worked with her for about ten years and handles excavation, forms, steel, plumbing, tile, coping and equipment, and her electrician came with her from home building. Only the gunite and plaster are subcontracted. Most pool builders, she says, are collecting bids from different excavation and tile crews on every job.

“It’s really nice to have one guy doing everything because there’s no pointing fingers.”Leann Rominger Scott, 38:25

What to expect from any custom build

When Leann was building homes, her team held a client expectations meeting before each job started, and she and Steven both think every client should hear it. A few of the points:

• Some sunny days, nobody will be on site. The drywall crew may be finished and the cabinets not yet in. That’s normal in custom building.
• You don’t need to be there to keep things on track. If you happen to answer a plumber’s question about a hose bib, it can feel like the job would have gone wrong without you. It wouldn’t; he would have called the builder.
• Thousands of things go right. She tells clients the team will get roughly 10,000 things right and a handful wrong, and the builder fixes the ones that go wrong.
• Change orders add time as well as money. Moving a tub, for example, can add two weeks because the plumber has to come back.

“In the build of this house, we are going to get literally 10,000 things right and we’re going to get like four wrong.”Leann Rominger Scott, 43:35

Steven added that a custom home isn’t a production home, and builders gain nothing by dragging a job out. Leann’s view of the hardest part of the business is being the middleman: respecting the trades while keeping quality and pricing where they should be, managing the client’s expectations, and not letting the client end up running the job. Her answer, like Steven’s, is to share bad news early.

Why she chose Fredericksburg

Leann and her husband lived on ten acres outside Austin until a developer bought the 60 wooded acres next door and planned 240 homes. Fredericksburg wasn’t on her radar, but her husband had spent time in the area in college. On their first visit, around the Fourth of July, she ran to a CrossFit class, realized how far she’d gone, and ended up hitching a ride into town on a parade float with people she’d just met.

She says she’s never looked back. She lives near Stonewall, serves on the Stonewall Volunteer Fire Department, and describes Fredericksburg as a supportive, faith-based community where you can ask someone how to pray for them without worrying about stepping on toes.

The Fredericksburg racquet center

Leann serves on the board of the new community racquet center, which she says is being built in partnership with the city. Plans she described include:

• Phase one: eight dedicated outdoor pickleball courts and eight tennis courts, plus a park with a playground, its own restrooms and a half-mile walking trail. She hoped to have people playing by March 2027.
• Phase two: a clubhouse with four indoor pickleball and four indoor tennis courts, with room set aside for other uses depending on what the community asks for.
• Community pricing: family, individual and drop-in options, priced similar to the city wellness center, with local and visitor rates. She was clear that it is not an elite private club.

For families thinking about moving here, she pointed out that the indoor courts will give kids somewhere to go when it’s 105 outside.