If your budget for all this is significant, I'd urge you to consult a specialist in patio design. You have several challenges, and whatever you do will be there forever, permanently affecting your enjoyment of the back yard, as well as your property values.

The curved step idea (I'm not a fan) would have to integrate with the rest of the design to be fully functional and aesthetically pleasing. Have you considered the very large footprint required for those curved steps? A good designer can offer alternatives that may be more compact and more functional. Maybe there is a landing that incorporates some useful features for your grilling area, possibly a place to set platters and utensils for the grill, within easy each of the kitchen, but the steps go to either side of that "countertop"? Maybe there is a lighting feature, or a planter. When you say "creative" that means thinking beyond fitting the pieces into the space.

Another comment, if you use a gazebo or some roof structure, consider how that will affect light coming in your windows. Consider if you use umbrellas and chairs where they will be stored when out of season.

About privacy from your neighbor's shed: the impulse is always to plant something big up against the fence, but that is not always the best solution or use of your space. Again, looking at the patio and garden as a whole, a talented designer can possibly orient certain features to give privacy without eating up the useable space of your garden.

Vegetable beds go where there is the greatest full sun exposure for as much of the day as possible.

I'm not a designer, but you should definitely get in touch with one.

Agree - I don't plan on designing this solely by myself; I do, however, like to have brainstormed & thought out ideas well before I meet with someone and am just collecting ideas at this time.

Regarding the grill - don't think I was clear on that - I don't want a built-in grill, nothing fancy. I just need a place (non-grass) to put a free standing grill on top to grill out.

Right, that's why I didn't mention a built-in grill. I mentioned a few simple features that can be added to spark your imagination a bit. For example if you need a retaining wall, why not make it high enough to provide some wall seating.

I realize the attached photo is probably way beyond your plans, and possibly not to your taste, but what ideas could you take from it and adapt

Ferntree Gully Project · More Info

Here is a totally different approach - what can you take from this photo? What do you like? What could you adapt? What would you change? Photos act as inspiration to get your brain turning over options that did not occur to you.

Voorhees Dorobek Residence · More Info

That's a great idea - thank you. Not interested in any water features..too cold for many months out of the year up here. No built-in grill. Don't like the chairs/tables close to the slider (b/c it is elevated - and wouldn't work with my property). I do like the look of the stones used - those are nice. Perhaps with a retaining wall, there could be some sort of screen/lattice for privacy to address my neighbor's elevated height (rather than planting trees by the fence). Instead of plants incorporated into the design, maybe there could be a small square (somewhere within the retaining wall) where I could fit a carton/crate for my herb garden....

Those are some initial ideas based off the pictures.

Yardvaark(9A) - no, I'm in no rush. I'm starting to brainstorm ideas for next spring. (I like to be prepared and think things through) :)

What did you mean by "It would be helpful, too, if you add a very simple base plan that shows, to scale, the major existing elements of the area: house footprint, fences, gravel bed, and large tree trunks " - how do I go about doing this?

Thank you for your suggestions and looking forward to more in the coming weeks when you're back home.

Silly question, but how do I bump the thread? Thanks!

If you were building a house, you'd be communicating your instructions to the builder via a set of "plans". Among the various drawings would be a FLOOR plan. For the work to come in your back yard (whether you do it yourself or have a contractor do it) you'll need the corollary to a floor plan. At the beginning of the brainstorming process, you need a plan that shows the existing major features (house foot print, fences, etc., as I mentioned above) on which to draw out ideas for the proposed changed. The design process (determining what will be built/installed) is not one of thinking of a component, like steps, and building it. It is one of EXPLORING through trial and error what kind of steps would work and look nice ... and making their size, shape and arrangement work with all of the other things, like patio & house, that are nearby. A designer would draw steps on the plan and analyze what is wrong and right with them. He would redraw them until he got a set of steps that were just right. In the old days, we drew a base plan and then used tracing paper over it to sketch out potential steps. Instead of bothering erasing, we'd just move on with making changes on a new piece of tracing paper because it was faster and easier. Since almost everyone has a copier these days, they can make several copies of the base plan (or parts of it that fit on copy paper) and draw various step arrangements until they evolve a drawing of steps that's just right. Today, most professionals would be using computers for drawing so there is virtually unlimited "saving" of drawing versions and no manual erasing. If amateurs have a Windows computer, they can use MS Paint to draw a plan since it has a grid (like graph paper) that can be toggled on and off. The grid would help maintain a scale, such as 1" = 10'. One can draw a plan that is not to scale (eyeballed) but it is only useful for contemplating vague ideas. For what you're doing, you'll need a "to scale" drawing in order to have accuracy and know that what you draw will fit and be right when you build it. Since you need this drawing ultimately anyway, it would be very helpful to create it and post it here on the thread. That way, instead of trying to give you ideas and suggestions through the use of words, which is very difficult, people could give them to you by drawing on your plan. It's a much easier way to convey an idea.

The way you bump the thread is by adding and submitting a new message. This will bring it back to the top. When people have nothing to add but wish to bump the thread, they just say "bump."

Based on my experience, you won't be able to grow things where the dryer vent, furnace vent and hot water heater vent are. The last two have hot and somewhat acidic gases, and the dryer vent just hot humid air. We ended up with a slab of rock near our vent since nothing, including grass grows there. Plants aren't fond of the warm gases in winter.

NHBabs(4b-5aNH) - can you show me a picture of what your area looks like near the vent?

This is a furnace vent only.

Have you checked on the expense to move the vents so the back yard would be more useable?

Yardvaark - Here is the best I could come up with designing a base plan of the backyard. Hope this is helpful/useful in some way - if it's not in an ideal format, if anyone can make it into one, I'd *really* appreciate it.

It was a heroic try, but Actually, these illustrations are not PLANS. A plan view looks directly down on the floor from above. It is much simpler than what you are drawing here. A plan allows one to see how close one thing in the yard is to another and it allows one to see the shape of the yard, the pool, patio outbuilding and whatever else is in the yard. The second drawing is an elevation which is like a plan, but looks directly at a wall instead of a floor. If I was to draw a perfect circle patio in your drawing of a yard directly above, it would actually look like an oval because the view of the yard is tilted. It would require that you understood perspective drawing and it would require you to INTERPRET the oval I drew. You might wonder if it was really a circle or if it might be an oval. In a PLAN drawing, it would be instantly obvious that it was a circle because it would be a circle.

Keep the plan drawing as simple as possible. Don't fill the yard with any color; leave it blank. Show the house wall as the heaviest line. Show a thin single line wrapping around the yard, or wherever it goes, for a fence. Show dots for tree trunks. It is not necessary to show the canopies as it will add clutter and eventually they will show up in pictures. Show circles for shrubs or a 'caterpillar' rectangle if they are connected in a hedge. Where grass ends and another material begins, show it as a single line along the path of the division. Don't draw any textures to show any materials. I scribbled out a plan example along the lines of what I'm looking for. It should be reasonably accurate to scale (at least in proportion) but it does not need to be any more complex. Hopefully, you can use line and rectangle tools to make it easy.

Yardvaark(9A) - Here is my attempt at the plan. Really hoping this will work.

does your back yard actually have angled sides (lot lines) like that?

This last base plan is perfect.

This is some rough doodling, mainly about the patio. I pulled it away from the house at the left side but kept it at the house, giving the grill a place to park against the wall and allowing for generous foundation planting space which can help add to the sense of privacy around the patio. You need to calculate how much square footage you need, but what I'm showing would allow for table & chairs, a little other seating, grill parking and some moving about space. You could shrink it some and still make it work.

The planting I'm showing is vague generic (since we don't know particulars of where you need screening) just showing that you have space for planting. The existing trees are in a gravel bed, like an island, but it does not look good when they are smack at the edge or too close to it as the outside trees are. Need to reconfigure the bed shape such the trees are well within it.

We put all those evergreens in the back of the property to help (eventually) with privacy given our climate (needed "leaves" in the winter") and the fact that at the slider level, we are 7 feet higher than our back neighbors....

We definitely want to have the smallest patio possible (enough for grill, table/chairs) without compromising too much on the actual grass space. (since the easement/river rock area is not usable).

What are the + symbols in the drawing? In the above drawing, are you suggesting plant beds directly in front of the house (to hide the cement foundation)? Is that actual patio on the left and right in front of plant beds? What are your thoughts on getting in/out of the house through the sliders? (keeping a current set up (narrow) of 3 steps like we have now)? Thanks!

Here are some "inspiration" photos I found that made me think of incorporating a retaining wall with planters (for a herb garden);

Another picture showing steps (not circular given the bay window - but perhaps these mirror the bay window shape better)? Any pros/cons to these kinds of steps to enter/exit the house/patio area? (wouldn't make them this large/exactly the same, but just showing general ideas).

One other thing I should mention - backyard faces north - gets lots of sun in the spring/summer; however, b/c of the eaves of the house, the river rock next to the house and some of the grass right next to the river rock never sees sun and is always in the shade.

The 'birthday cake' step arrangement is going to seem weird because it must project out in front of the planting area. I'm letting the patio shape itself reinforce the bay window shape.

I'm suggesting you NOT keep the steps narrow (one door width). This looks stingy and cheap. Open it up to the full width of the slider or wall face that contains the slider.

"Is that actual patio on the left and right in front of plant beds?" I'm not sure what you're asking. There is not really plant bed separating patio from house. There are plant beds near the perimeter fence, for screening and viewing.

Yardvaark(9A) - bumping the thread as you suggested.

Re: steps in front of slider. Keep the same shape/style of steps as currently present but just span the entire slider? (or change the look of the steps altogether)?

Is that actual patio on the left and right in front of plant beds?" - I am not familiar/do not know what all the symbols represent on your sketched drawing. The patio area is clear (with the written word patio) - but i'm not sure what the 2 shapes are on either side of the patio next to the house.

Anyway to alter the layout so the patio doesn't stick so far out into the yard (particularly right in the middle of the yard)?

Sorry about the confusion. The "+" sign is a symbol representing the center of a plant. The circle represents its perimeter. In this case, it represents a small tree. The "." symbol is the same thing. In this case it represents a shrub form. The shapes in between the patio and house are generic plants ... there only to give the plan a vague sense that plants in that space are possible. When looking down from above (as in a PLAN) all individual plants are going to look like a circle with a center. The scalloped edge thing is a plant MASS .... where smaller plants are amassed together such that you do not see the individual, but only the perimeter of the group. Here, it's all generic and doesn't yet matter about the plants. I'm only showing them to say that "some plants can fit in this space." At this point, all you need to care about is the patio. The hardscape (patio) comes first. The plantings are subordinate and will comply with whatever way the patio ends up being.

Since you don't want a deck, whatever steps you have will come fairly near the door. You'll still need a landing at the door (rather than immediately stepping down as that would be cheap looking and feeling, such as what one would expect to see in a mobile home situation) which is why I suggest make it and steps full width of the wall face. It will work and look much better than if you try to make it only one door width, as it is now.

You only need 4 risers for the set of steps. You want a small patio. There is no need or reason to make a contrived or convoluted set of steps with this small, simple need. Keep them spacious and simple and you will have a nice finished package. Get cute or clever and you might like it for a while, but others will wonder why you bothered or the next owner may dislike it. Simple, well functioning steps will work best. You can glamourize them in the construction details, if that suits your taste. If you want something other than straightforward, it would be best if you sketch it out in plan view, and then I'd be happy to react to what you've proposed, giving the pros and cons.

I think I mentioned before but did not see your answer .... you'll need to figure out the total square footage that you want for patio space. It doesn't need to be to the square inch. You just need to get into the ballpark on it. While I'm not working to scale -- just proportion -- I estimate the patio in the sketch to be about 170 s.f., which does not count the pure walking space in front of the steps. Including that, it might be around 200 s.f. Keep in mind that in order to do the same functions (cook and eat) requires a little more room outdoors than it does indoors. Outdoors, people move about faster and flail their arms more :-).

Let's start at the beginning.

You are in the house. You open the slider and step out onto a landing that is big enough to maneuver around and open and close the door. Let's make it the width of the slider, and about 3 ft in depth. From this landing, you can turn left, right, or go straight ahead. Straight ahead puts you in the middle of the yard, where you don't want to be. So let's put the stairs on the left or on the right. Now you can use the space on one side of the bump out as part of the patio without going out into the yard, and the width of the decklet is about the same as the current stairs.

Forgot to upload the pic. Disregarding placeholder plantings near the house for time being.

mad_gallica(zone 5 - eastern New York) - I don't mind entering/exiting the yard from "straight ahead"; I just don't want the majority if not all the patio to be located centrally in front of the sliders.

Yardvaark(9A) - Thank you for that information. I'll get back to you regarding sq footage which will help with the plan. And yes, I totally agree the steps should span the entire width of the sliders - I was not disagreeing with that at all. Just curious regarding how they should be set up (if similar in style/shape as the current ones).

Yardvaark(9A) - with the last drawing you posted, the patio starts to include the area in front of the hot water tank vent, dryer vent, etc. What are some options to get around this and still have the patio there? (not sure if plants will grow if they have hot air blown into them and/or there is a considerable amount of shade given the eaves overhang and facing north/north west).

Thank you.

If you don't want the bulk of the patio to be in the middle of the lawn, you have to start thinking differently. Because currently you are fixated on a grand staircase straight down from the sliders that is going to need a grand patio in front of it to make any sense.

Whether you have pipes exiting a wall or not, we don't jam plants tight up against the wall. We pull them out and give them some space to grow. Plants will screen the pipes from view so the pipes will be out of your thoughts. I'm showing the patio extending far enough to include the dryer vent. This should not be a major consideration. If you have company over and are using the patio and don't want to hear the dryer, don't dry clothes at that time. If you don't want to see the dryer vent at all, shorten the patio in that direction & cover it with a shrub, but this seems overly concerned to me. Why would it be of any consequence? The dryer vent is not major ugly. Paint it the color of your siding and it will nearly disappear.

At the beginning the question is whether the patio goes right, left or is centered with door. I can see no answer other than to the right, which lends itself to grill parking. You're not going to want to look out the windows (the three at left) and see the back of a grill ... which you would if the patio were left. The patio centered pushes it much farther into the yard.