Thank you for the compliment. The porch also provides a place to mount external speakers and the railing serves as somewhere to rest items while opening the door. Noone ever has condern about footing on the large steps which are illuminated after dark. Don't know if you saw the informational comments following several of the photos, but we designed and built the patio ourselves. It took DH and our son most of a summer working primarily weekends. Prior to building the patio, footings for the egress porch and pergola were set ready for construction in later seasons. We engaged a local landscaper to design the flanking gardens plus specify plants suited for the exposure and native soil. This was a worthwhile investment. Very few plant failures have happened. I mention this as our home was also new and it took several years before everything in the photos was constructed. Small plants experience less transplant shock allowing them to mature more quickly so in a few seasons are actually fuller than beginning with larger ones. DH signs on here too and will be able to answer more technical questions about the build should you have any.

Thanks! I am starting to think the same thing. Put in a double French door with sidelights centered on the wall and get rid of those windows over the radiators. Wide folding doors were my original vision but cost and radiators made me revise that.

I generally agree with the last sketch of Doug's, that a low retaining wall would be of great benefit, or essential to solving the problem. You'd have to decide how much paving you'd prefer. It could be a landing similar to what you have, a walk or a patio, though the latter is not a requirement to solving the drainage. Mainly, the grade needs to slope downhlll as it travels away from the building. If it simultaneously slopes (at all) toward the path, then you'd better pave the path on account of it's being used as a drainage "conduit." If it slopes away from the path, too, then you just need a landing at the door. Part of the equation depends on how much you use the path and for what. Grass doesn't hold up to heavy traffic ... especially when wet. Make sure the regrading extends far enough away from the house that water will reach the point where it is carried from the yard. It can't be blocked at any point. It looks like your house is high enough from the low ground that this should not be a problem.

It's always hard to get a read on slopes from just pictures, but here it seems pretty obvious. The water is flowing along both sides of your house to the back corner of your property, and carrying down between the neighbors to the lower street elevation in front of their houses. You just need to form your grade to allow that to continue as it wants to go naturally. As far as your patio, it is lower than the grade. You need to dig down the adjacent area next to the plastic edging, under the trampoline, and probably remove the buried concrete "curb." Slope however needed alongside the wall of house towards the corner instead of towards under the trampoline. It would be good to do a test dig behind one of the concrete walls to see if there is a drain tile at the bottom, I'm guessing there is not. A french drain in RED would need to be at the bottom of the wall and run to daylight. Create a small swale in GREEN and direction of water in BLUE. Verify your neighbor's in PURPLE is not coming in to your yard.