I'd take a bit different approach and redo the entire backyard, getting rid of the raised planters which look very arbitrary in their design and placement and excuse me for saying so, but very amateurish as well. Heavy clay soils are very common in the PNW and relatively easy to fix or at least work with. Get rid of the sand/gravel, get rid of the raised beds and import some good compost to work into the soil. Make a few easy mounds along the perimeter - longish, irregularly shaped berms, maybe 12" in height. Slope gently back to ground level at the fenceline. This will give you some additional height for any screening plantings (you can easily move and relocate the few existing plants), plus it will work to improve drainage or at least provide a fast draining planting base. I'd disagree about the Viburnum tinus, also. That back garden is pretty restricted and with the fence, should provide more than adequate protection from winds for Laurustinus, provided you are truly a zone 8 (specific location?). I'd hesitate to add any trees in such a tight situation, but some very columnar evergreens could work (i.e. Chamaecyparis nootkatensis 'Green Arrow', 'Van den Akker' or 'Strictly Weeping'). Bamboo could work also but IMO tends to provide much more of a mass than such a small space warrants. Add back the paver pathway if you like and fill in with lower plantings of your choice and groundcovers. btw, your willow "tree" is just a shrub form of Japanese willow grafted onto a standard......it will never get much taller than it is now except for some expansion of the canopy.

Italian cypress is better used as verticle accent than as a hedge. Easter red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) grows slowly and, depending on soil fertility, may range from 16 to 66 ft tall. One site listed average height from 30 to 40 ft with average width of 10 to 20 ft. You will need to plant at least 8 ft from the fence, and you could eventually lose a lot of space to the area beneath these trees. J. virginiana also causes pollen allergy in some people. It's not that good of a choice. The main problem with hedges and trees for privacy is that they take a long time to get tall. A quicker solution is to use lattice panels between tall fence posts. HERE is a picture of such panels used as a fence. These can have either about 4" openings good for vines, or about 2" openings that give immediate privacy. Is it absolutely necessary to do all this privacy work at once? Perhaps you could screen off only those neighbors who are noisy or nosey with trellis work. Plant a tall natural hedge that would fill in over time where the neighbors are less annoying. HERE is a list of the best shrubs for Texas from Texas A&M.

So the sanding would not even be necessary if the deck had not gotten too far gone. When I had a deck that needed the occasional repainting, it was about a 2-hour job from beginning to end, mostly with a roller and a little brushing at edges. When I bought the deck, it had been let go by prior owner so I had to pressure wash and do a little sanding (with a handheld sander). But never had to sand again when painting. Just wash. And your deck looks very nice.

Landscaping a backyard for privacy means placing tall, screening shrubs near the offending property lines ... not close up to the house and patio. (There, you'd want to use low plants or overhead trees, or some combination thereof, between you and the view.) For the screening shrubs, you'd need to account for the varying light conditions, which means using a type of plant that can accept sun or shade, or using a variety of plants, each which accepts the conditions in which they are placed. Since you have a length of property to screen, it makes sense that you would place all the shrubs in a bed and keep them separate from the lawn. If you wished to incorporate any small tree forms in the mix, you might want to place groundcover below them instead of only mulch. (It's an opportunity for adding another element of interest. It could include groundcovers that bloom.) Since you want to screen the CL fence, too, it will be an L-shaped bed. If screening both CL fences, it would be U-shaped, following the fence and lot lines. The bed depth, front to back, should be sufficient to accommodate the shrub dimensions, which is going to be quite large ... so probably 8' or 10' depth. Understand that whatever ideas you are given and wish to contemplate, and possibly incorporate, need to be put in the form of a plan before you do any actual work. So prepare a base plan on which you can work out the ideas. You could begin that by tracing over a plot plan of your yard. If you don't have that, measure and draw out on graph paper.