Spring has finally sprung

and the work has begun. This morning, on our new deck and patio.

We have a gorgeous 8' x 8' sliding glass door leading to the backyard directly from the family room/kitchen, but we didn't use the patio much last year due to it's crappiness.

We have an amazingly deep backyard, especially for a house downtown. Our lot is 210'; the backyard is 156', but with a width of only 20' it looks a lot like a bowling alley. That is set to change.

The problems with the old patio were many. One of the biggest was the mess that it was in. We tore down an old addition from the back of the house 12 years ago, and decided to use the brick from that foundation for the patio. Big mistake - there were two types of brick used, and over the years the freeze-thaw cycles led to complete disintegration of one of them, so the patio was always a dirty mess. And the weeds that grew between the cracks drove me crazy.

Our current patio was also too small. There wasn't really enough room for a table and chairs, the BBQ, and people to safely move about. I was always worried that someone would brush up against the BBQ and get burned.

So although we built the patio ourselves and it was a tonne of work, I'm not at all sorry to see it go.

The plan is to build a 12' x 14' deck at the level of the family room with 6' high privacy screens at the two neighbouring sides. I considered a planter box for the third side, but have decided to go with an open railing so the view of the backyard isn't obstructed from inside the house. We'll buy cushy outdoor seating for the upper section so that it's a nice place to sit and relax.

We'll have stairs on the right (when facing the backyard from the house) going down to a ground-level stone patio that's 20'x20'. This is where we'll house the BBQs (both gas and charcoal) and the table and chairs. I'd also love to build or buy an outdoor pizza oven. There are some pretty sleek ones available at Costco right now that I have my eye on.

Beyond the ground level patio we'll have two deep gardens flanking a central path leading to rear half of the yard. Hopefully breaking it up into "rooms" like this will help relieve the bowling alley feel. I'm excited to get moving on it!