Deck Design

Wow. This picture from a random internet site is exactly what I always wanted our deck and patio to look like. This was the design I tried to execute at our old house in Connecticut. This is just wow:

Gorgeous and exactly what I wanted off the back of our Connecticut house.

But this is what we got -- walls and tall railings completely around and a very small footprint and a cramped layout:

Newly built, but not the original design.

I wanted a wood deck with an angled stair at the corner that stepped down to flagstones laid in the lawn. Along one side, the highest, an open style railing would be fine, but otherwise the edges of the deck would have no railing and just step down to the next level. Like my friend Peggy's deck and large stone landing:

Peggy's beautiful deck -- look at the lichen on those huge stepper stones. Perfect.

But our space was too high and we needed multiple stairs and that meant we had to have railings along the whole deck for safety. We ended up with an enclosed wooden ark, projecting out into the yard.

The deck was too high and had to have railings. 

We had problems with the footprint due to unanticipated lot line zoning, which cut off the deck area awkwardly. We had to have those railings around it by code because of the height off the ground. And the stones laid in the grass weren't a thing our contractor did, his expertise was laying pavers and building a faux stacked wall. He did a great job, but it wasn't what I envisioned.

The stone patio was cramped for a table and chairs,
but the space on the deck above was even tighter.

We should have abandoned my original plan and designed something that would fit the height and space better. But what I wanted in my mind was what the photo at the top of this post shows. It didn't come out that way and I always struggled with the cramped, too-small confined patio and awkward deck.

In the end we spent a fortune to rebuild the deck into a shallow landing with more open metal railings and with wider steps, which made the stone patio bigger. More workable, but still not what I wanted.

Rebuilt with a landing, more open stairs and bigger paver stone area.

So when we first saw our new home in Santa Fe, I was completely taken with the low wood deck that stepped down only slightly to a big flagstone patio area.

As we first saw it, with the previous owner's stuff.

Yes! This was what I wanted all along. The dimensions and look and usefulness were exactly how I envisioned a backyard structure off the house. A slider from the bedroom directly to the deck is a bonus.

After we moved in, when we still had the red wood slat Mayan chairs

I love the patio and deck here. The wood deck is in dappled shade in the afternoons, which is lovely, and there is plenty of room on the stone patio for a table and chairs and even for cushioned seating under the vigas.

Do you think we have too many seating areas? Nah.

We use the back yard patio and deck all the time. It's what I wanted. It's not what the photo at the top shows -- that's just perfect -- and it doesn't have the expanse of green lawn around it or a wide view that our old deck in CT had, but our deck here is what I had wanted from the beginning.

We only had to move to another house 2,000 miles away to get it right.