Many thx Emily for your input, much appreciated- I had to finalise the coping paver yesterday and have gone with a square edge coping paver in http://www.stoneoutdoors.com.au/Metro/Colour-Range - Portland, its a textured paver off white/with flecks of bluestone aggregrate through it - thinking I could do either a/plain concrete with scoring (lines in concrete, with possibly a long line of tonal pebbles seeded into concrete so it is all tonal and hopefully disappears and makes the pool itself feature; or b/we slightly colour the concrete a deeper blueygrey like our bricks (not quite as dark) and either score the concrete in large blocks or score it so it resembles the 500 x 500 pavers around the pool coper/edge? Hope this makes sense:) Cheers Helen

I'm not an expert, but we have renovated a pool and made 1 big mistake. We had similar coping that formed a big hob all the way around (unlike yours). We leveled it out with paving (and then coated the pebblecrete with an epoxy sandstone-look product). The mistake? Part of the yard sloped down to the pool. Every time it rained.....all the sand, dirt and debris from down the side of my house and around the pool went straight into the pool. If we had our time over- we'd leave a small hob around the side of the pool where the land sloped down. Yours looks like it is on the downside of your house with some garden. The hob might be there for a reason.....as we learned.

@ Ba Beltramo, I think this dilemma might be better solved if we we had pictures, as suggested by rahnch but if that is too difficult to provide, it would help if you supplied more information about exactly where this pool sits as opposed to the home and what size and shape it is including the lay of the land, pool fencing etc... I'm a little concerned about some of the suggestions that even talk of possibly destroying the pool although I have nothing personally against the suggestion providing you are well informed and take into account what will best suit you personally. After reading you dilemma heading again, "Re-design the space AFTER pool" I'm now assuming that the pool may already be gone and you have a huge hole where it once sat?? If that's the case, then it could be as simple as filling the hole in as you suggested yourself. If the pool is still in place and you are considering filling it in, then I would be concerned about your thoughts to effectively destroy it when I personally know just how costly is it to have a pool in the first place with many people who could only dream of having one!! At the end of the day, your property must work for you but I would hope you give it allot of thought before you do anything.

We have 600x400x30mm limestone pavers and would like to replace our old clay pavers with a more modern look. Question: Can a 400mm wide paver sit on top of a 350mm wide pool coping bed? The coping bed is raised about 150mm above the soil. About 20mm of the paver will go over into the pool side as an edge, 350mm lay on the coping bed, leaving 30mm hanging over, well, nothing. The limestone pavers are dense, heavy, 30mm thick. Question : do you think they will crack or break? Is it do-able or should we cut down the pavers to 350mm width (extra cost). Appreciate your advice Houzzers.