Money Drain : An unfinished pool remains as empty as its owner’s bank account.

It’s as though someone dug a hole in Lucille Bolin’s back yard and then tried to fill it in with money. Her money.

After 10 years of shoveling, the hole is still there. But it has gobbled up the life savings of the 74-year-old Bolin. On Tuesday, it had claimed her house as well.

The hole is a partially built 14-by-26-foot swimming pool behind Bolin’s home on Sully Drive in Sun Valley. Bolin paid $10,885 in early 1978 to have the pool built so her visiting grandchildren would have a place to swim.

But the pool’s contractor mistakenly dug the hole too close to the property line behind Bolin’s hilltop home, which has a commanding view of parts of Burbank and the eastern San Fernando Valley. A Los Angeles city building inspector noticed that some of the pool’s plumbing and its proposed decking extended into a neighbor’s yard.

When the neighbor refused to grant Bolin an easement or sell her the needed sliver of land, city inspectors ruled that the pool could not be completed. The contractor pulled out.

Bolin figured things couldn’t get worse. She was wrong.

While the unplastered, kidney-shaped pool collected rainwater in her back yard, Bolin began running up bills from a series of lawyers she hired to recover her costs. Bolin never received a dime from the contractor. But she says the lawyers’ bills emptied her bank account and left her on welfare.

“That’s a $100,000 hole in the ground out there,” she said bitterly as she packed her belongings in cardboard boxes. No longer able to make her mortgage payments, she is moving this week to a Sylmar trailer park.

According to Bolin, she has borrowed money from her daughter to finance her move until she can sell her Sun Valley house--provided she can find a buyer willing to overlook the unfinished pool in the back yard.

Bolin’s odyssey from hilltop homeowner to welfare recipient began the week the contractor abandoned the pool project.

After that, she complained to the Contractors State License Board, which regulates contractors by fining them or restricting their licenses if work is done improperly. The board’s staff at first decided there was insufficient evidence against the contractor. Later, they changed their minds, but not until a three-year statute of limitations had passed and the case could not be reopened.

After that, Bolin hired a Burbank lawyer to sue the contractor. She said the attorney was paid $3,000 to take the case, but never got around to filing the suit. Bolin said she became impatient and decided to take her case elsewhere.

After that, Bolin went to a Los Angeles attorney recommended by her foot doctor. She paid him $1,600. Nine months later, when she complained that nothing was happening on the case, the lawyer invited her to find other representation, she said.

After that, a swimming pool consultant suggested hiring a third attorney. The new lawyer decided to sue the first two lawyers, but his case withered when it went to arbitration and a judge ruled that a one-year statute of limitations had expired.

After that, a second pool consultant recommended that Bolin hire a fourth attorney. He was paid $1,650 to resurrect the case against the contractor, Bolin said. But, she said, when that lawyer told her she must pay him another $1,500 if she wanted to discuss the case with him, she dropped him.

After that, Bolin hired a prominent Los Angeles attorney to press the breach-of-contract suit against the pool builder. That lawyer’s firm was paid $11,500 and took the case to trial in late 1984. Bolin lost when a jury ruled that the contractor had not been negligent.

She said her lawyers billed her for another $37,000 in costs--and then told her she had to pay the contractor’s lawyers’ costs totaling $27,000.

After that, Bolin paid a Granada Hills lawyer $5,000 to appeal the decision. An appeals court refused to hear the case.

After that, Bolin filed a complaint with the California State Bar. She asked that the regulatory body order her lawyers to reimburse her. Bar officials have notified her that they are investigating her case, but they declined Tuesday to discuss it.

“By that time, I was on welfare,” Bolin explained. “They’d even made me take $200 out of savings accounts I’d opened up for my granddaughters when they were babies. I wanted to get some of my lawyer money back.”

Unable to make her monthly $592.56 mortgage payment on her combined monthly Social Security and welfare income of $461.17, she borrowed money from her daughter to move to the trailer park and then put her house up for sale.

Because of the unfinished pool, Bolin said, she could not qualify for a loan needed to pay to have the pool dug up and filled in before the house is sold. Hole and all, it is listed at $269,000. She said lending institutions told her they refuse to lend on property that is involved in litigation.

The gaping hole has left potential home buyers shaking their heads.

“It should be filled in,” said real estate agent Mark Lauren, who escorted several clients through the house this week. “The home has ‘good bones.’ It needs to be presented as an investment opportunity.”

Bolin acknowledges that her obsession with the soured pool project led her to dump good money after bad into her back yard hole. But she says it was a matter of principle.

“I’m finished now. I’m lucky this didn’t make me a bag lady,” she said. “But I had a legitimate contract, by God. The law says you make a legal contract, you keep it.”

for foto slugged pool