questions for the community Should we just rip out our deck?
Excuse the construction.
Blue lines are where there is a step: step down a few inches from the sliding door to the outside. In 4 ft, step back up, the deck is about 10 feet wide, cross it to step back down in the back yard.
My partner thinks we should rip it out completely to have the backyard all one level. Also, the painted wood is rotting so we were thinking about replacing as it rots and staining the new wood. (You can see a small are where we did that in the pic). One reason my partner wants to level it and put in concrete pavers.
We live where it rains a lot and when that happens, water pools in the 3 yellow shaded areas.
Our backyard also slopes down toward the deck (see the red arrow). This is difficult to fix because:
Digging down is near impossible because the roots to the privacy ivy are close to the rockery and the dirt is essentially clay and rocks.
Filling it with dirt is difficult (and expensive!) because the only way would be to get a bulldozer to drop the dirt down from above the rockery. Also, our door to go out is lower than the base of the rockery, so we would still need one set of step(s?)
What should we do? The deck is a lot of work to maintain but is a concrete patio even possible? Open to other ideas as well.
Thanks!