after reading... i need to add.... we have a deer problem, along with black bear problem. and obviously snakes (we get poisonous here), and it seems chipmunks lol.

This location seems illogical for a patio, or even for growing roses and grapes. I can't see the house in context, but the photo suggests this is too far from the house for those purposes.

Why not just more grass, a large native flowering shrub, and a row of large stones to mark the property line? I would be inclined to keep things very simple and low-maintenance.

house is to the right of the picture. we want a patio somewhere out by the creek because we love just sitting out there listening to it.

I like the idea of a row of stones, since you obviously need something to mark the boundary. But, it looks like you need to check your HOA rules closer to see what you are allowed to do, before getting too many ideas that you might not be allowed to do. ;)

And of course, you may want to experiment over the course of the summer to see where you like sitting, to site your patio & sitting area (and to see if you have a buggy problem, as well as your larger wildlife issues!).

Where in East Tennessee are you?

Kick ass backyard. What's up with your neighbors, have the already had a talk with you about the kids?!?

So it's hard to get the orientation of your lot, as I understand it the stream is at the back of your lot, so the lean to is back right, correct? And who's fence is that behind lean to?

Make sure you HOA can actually enforce rules before you rule anything out, we have one but it has no power to actually do anything other then say they don't like it.

I think a patio would be lovely in that location, might be a little walk from your house but it's so beautiful.

What are you going to do in your large flat yard? Good place for a garden, volleyball, etc. I bet the soil is really good there too.

Oh, you should lock your photobucket account.

not in tennessee. it is a nice flat yard....doesnt happen often here since we are in the mountains. not sure about good soil, but our neighbors all have nice flowers.

the fence behind the lean to is the grouchy neighbors... BUT its not as close as it looks, its actually about 3 ft away... HOA says anything that is built has to be so far from property line, thats buildings and fences... yep... cant put a fence up unless its 10 ft inside your property line... considering our lot isnt all that big...well. anyways... the grouchy neighbor put the fence up so he didnt have to look at the lean to (cant say i dont blame him!). the previous owners used the lean to for storage and wood storage.

this pic was taken in dec... you should see it now with the flowers coming up! to the left of a pic where the ground slopes... the nice neighbors planted a really nice flower bed... now i just need to replace some roses (going to try to bring some flowers out on them this yr first!!!). they havent bloomed in yrs she said, but i have some ideas i want to put to use first.

my kids have already been yelled at by the neighbor. they literally put one foot over onto their line (this is my 4yo) and he yelled at her to get off his property. we are actually going to have the lot surveyed so we know for sure. my idea of lattice every so often may not fly with the codes :( we are trying to figure out where to find the codes!!

okay orientation of the lot... where the 2 boys are...thats the creek, we own half way through the creek :) then the ugly lean to, the ugly shed (which is getting power washed and repainted--should we paint it an outrageously bright orange and purple?? lol), and then the house.

thanks for reminding me to relock my photobucket account. i had it unlocked because i had to post on something and the pic wasnt showing... its locked now..will the pics still show up? i may need to put house pics into a different account.

You should take some new pics for us with your flowers! So what's the other direction, opposite the lean to?

So is that a stove pipe coming out of the roof of your little barn?

I'd just repaint the front of barn and two sides white, then let your 4 year old finger paint whatever he wants on the back of the barn for the neighbors.....

I hate bad neighbors, i can't imagine what I would have said to them when the yelled at your son....

Petition to have his fence removed since it doens't meet the code requirements. Oh, and your HOA doesn't have a website?
There should be a legal document stating all rules and regulations and you should have received it during closing, ask your agent....

Me personally with neighbors like that and kids I build a big fence and sacrafice the few feet of property....

Btw, there are multiple rules - there are the rules of the HOA, which you should've gotten during closing, but then there are also the overlying zoning and building ordinances, which you need to get from the municipality. Some places have them online, but not everywhere, and if you aren't familiar with reading zoning ordinances, you may be better off going in to ask someone.

we havent closed on teh house yet. we rent til we close...closing will be this month or early may. the owners are fine with us pulling hte lean to down (they are too old to do anything with it and really wanted it down anyways).

we keep finding out certain things from the neighbors, but we need to get everything in writing..i dont wnat to plant the wrong colour flowers lol.

as for pics.. i will get new pics, but its snowing right now! ugh my poor flowers that were just starting to come up. this snow is sticking too...

opposite side of the lean to... flower garden that goes down the slope, some poles that im currently using as clothesline poles... and then the nice neighbors they do have a white picket fence (they put it up before HOA got involved!).

hold on let me get a pic..even with teh snow.

okay...hopefully these will show up, if not let me know..i put the lock back on my account.

sorry about the snow..but you can get the idea. i took these from the middle of the house. also excuse the clothes line... my dryer isnt hooked up yet and with 4 kiddos i had to do something..not doing laundry today!

this is directly back from the house... the poles and to the right, on the slope only, is a flower garden...there are 3 or 4 rose bushes that have never bloomed.

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this pic is more to the right of the yard... the nice neighbors are on this side...you can see their really nice picket fence. they have done wonders to their yard... took them since 1962 :) their house is the exact same as ours. no their buildings are not 10 ft in either, but they were before HOA took over. and thats my antique merry-go-round you see thats yellow... what a joy for the children!
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Your pictures were showing up even after you locked your account, now they don't, but when I use a different browser I can see them, don't know what that is about.

It's so nice that you have a flat back yard. And your neighbors fence looks good, hopefully you could do that on the other side. They might let you attach to it to keep your kids in the yard!

Umm, we got distracted from the whole point of the thread....

You are already planning on tearing the lean too down, i think it might be best to wait and see what the area looks and feels like after it's been removed. You might even want to wait a season and see what it's like just to have grass in that area.....

If you are not too worried about the creek flooding, a really neat idea would be to build a deck there that extends out over the creek. I've seen some built where they get two telephone poles dig a trench, bury half or more of them parallel to each other with the ends extending over the creek, then the build the deck on that.....

yah...lean to has to go..its going tomorrow!!! it was built rather hastily and if something broke or needed repair...they just threw something together (just so you knwo what we are dealing with... our house was built in 1958 and only 2 rooms have more than 1 coat of paint.. and those 2 rooms only have the original and one coat on top, i was told it was done 20 yrs ago!! and im still scraping paint off tiles and flooring!).

we have to reseed a lot of the yard as it is.

our biggest problem right now though is finding a way to mark our yard so the children remember. they are children afterall!! i wont tell you how often i have thought of using the cheap $1 garden markers lol. i want to avoid them putting up more caution tape!! i need to figure out how to cover that up already.

the creek hasnt flooded since 1972... the levy broke and flooded everything. we get trout in that creek :) our nice neighbors have a really nice bridge that crosses over, but they wont let anyone else do it (he has had it up since before the flood)...he also said the bugs get really bad over there. we do plan on buying a screen room for over our patio (perhaps a small firepit). we would have to see what regulations say about building a deck out.. i do know we are putting stairs in so that we can fish..right now there is a ladder attached... no thanks!

You can always re-arrange some of the stones in the creek to make a stepping path to the otherside!

Oh, and pics of backyard since the demolition?

demo hasnt happened...it hit the 30s and we had snow!! we are hoping to get to it soon though, we have someone that wants the tin off the roof come friday!

who does'nt like 4 year olds? I mean for real, they are adorable, funny, and inventive! I think i would have marched myself over there and explained if there was a problem with one of my children my door was always open but it was absolutely unacceptable and intolerable to yell at my child...period!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! is that enough exclamation points to get the point across lol. Why do people have to be so rude, and especially to new neighbors, they will need their grass mowed someday or the drive shoveled when yours are old enough to help and my guess is it aint gonna happen :). My solution is get the yappiest dog you can find and when you go out into your yard place it right on your property line of the ugly neighbor and i am talking within inches of being on their property :). Or a rooster right by their bedroom window? The possibilities are endless hehe. Ducks trained to only poop in their yard...okay enough. I cant seem to let it go, so i am just gonna stop typing all together lol. One last comment though, i think once the lean to is gone a nice gazebo with a opening to the creek area and to the front would be nice with some sort of a walk to down to the creek. You could put bench seating on one side of the gazebo and a swing on the other...geez it gets more relaxing as we go. Plant nice flower beds around the gazebo and you could even have like a stone path from the house to the gazebo and tie it all in and the same stone path on down to the creek from the gazebo. You could use creek rock which would be very economical if you could find some place to collect it, just alot of work but sounds like your not afraid of that since you have spoke of the work you are undertaking already :). Come to think of it since your neighbors are so ugly would you consider selling lol. I know how to take care of people like that :).

lol..well... we dont own the land quite yet...so there is a possiblity..oh wait..i just got unpacked dont want to repack and move again so soon :)

our dog has taken to going potty right on the property line :) makes for a great way to keep kids off their property lol...okay i am nice and do clean it up every few days.

what gets me is its actually an empty lot. i guess there was a really cool round house next to ours, they bought the land and tore it down..so that way they didnt have to worry about neighbors that close to their house... so we have this huge piece of land in between our houses, its all empty minus a few trees and the fence you see behind the lean to. its such a shame my kids cant just run loose on it...but nope (btw...the grouchy man has yelled at me too... i didnt realize i had my toes on his property when i was cleaning the leaves and junk out of my flower bed!)

i like the gazebo idea.. not sure if we can or not though due to HOA... but we may be able to.. im sure we could figure out away to do it.

the neighbors are going to hate it when we have all the family here...noone lives in state...so we have 2 families coming with their rvs, and then mil... 8 children running lose...

we can get river rocks out of the creek..its just a matter of getting them up! i think we are going to take the wood from teh lean to and build some steps to go down to the creek though.

In defence of the grouchy neighbors, sounds like they have been use to old quiet couple next door and now they have a family with kids and they are just sure they are all a bunch of heathens. And they probalby hate change. I wouldn't do things to try to aggrevate them. Turn the other cheek and be nice and maybe they will realx or at least ignore you. (And it will really upset them even more if you don't get upset at them). If they hate kids that much, let them spring for a fence 10' from the property line on their side and you will have a more spacious feeling yard. Of course they would go nuts trying to keep your kids off that 10' strip.

I always say don't do anything for a year til you see what you have and how you use the yard.

well our first thing we realized that we are losing our fire log storage..thats what it was used as, but since its so rundown and attracts snakes and rats, we need to get rid of it! i really dont want to find a diamondback sitting in there one day when i go and get my wood!! so we are trying to figure out how to keep a winters worth of wood dry after we tear that down. we do have the other shed..though the part with the pipe is a workshop and the other part is holding boat, generator and so on..so it looks like we do need to put in another shed.

tibs... thanks for defending them :) but they actually didnt like the people that lived here before (and those people bought this house new). and the grouchy neighbors got mad if the people here before mowed too far and went over the property line.