Show the area in a to-scale plan view. It's hard to grasp how things fit together from various pictures looking at different directions. I'm talking about a SIMPLE plan -- building outlines, paving, deck, tree trunks. Nothing more.

Explain what you mean by "... path installed instead of a small walk way." What is a "path" to you?

When you say you are going to dig up the walkway to “rebury” the downspout, where are you going to direct the water? Out onto the ground further away from the foundation? Into a drywell? Just wondering as you don’t mention.

What Saypoint said. There has to be a place for the water to drain to, and it needs to be able to accomodate all the water your largest potential storm can provide.

As far as the walk outside the door, if you are using a snowblower, it needs paving of some kind. Anything else will get thrown by the snowblower, so no gravel or mulch path. IME, grass or other plants won’t stand up to the foot traffic just outside a door.

It looks like traffic patterns go to the deck. I'm not a fan of buried downspouts because they are an enormous pain if they get clogged with leaf debris, which they probably will over time.

Your path between house and shed looks fine --- it's too narrow to do much and the grass is doing okay. Unless you end up looking there all the time, I'd leave it alone. If you do end up looking down that alley, then stick something to look at by the shrubs at the end --- a statue, a beautiful tree, etc and line the area with small, pretty shade-loving plants. Hostas will grow anywhere, but you want them dwarf.

A climber next to the door featured in pic one Clematis perhaps? and removing the stuff like the table and is it a mop? would pretty up that area.

I apologize for not getting back to this sooner, I was trying to find time to do the drawing and life got in the way. Thank you for the responses!

Faith, I am in South East Michigan, zone 6.

Saypoint, we need to divert the water away from the foundation. The house is on a hill, so the plan is remove the stone walk way and dig a trench through the area between the garage & shed and around the corner of the house. It will end at a wooded area where it’s all down hill to the road and can drain naturally.

Sigrid, the current spout is buried but when we tried to clear it with a hose, it hit the clog almost immediately. We don’t know if it’s pipe that’s been run and needs replacing or if there is a drywell buried next to the house. We had new gutters and gutter covers installed about 10 years ago when we did the roof. They put new downspouts but didn’t dig. Whatever is there was there when we bought the house which is 30 years old. So are there other/better down spout options we should consider? I’m open to all suggestions. And who would be the right person to call for a fix like this? I was thinking a landscaper but am not sure.

I was amazed at the amount of water that was shooting back up from the pipe during our last heavy rain. It was enough to fill the enitre bed with sitting water and I don’t want it damning again on the roof in winter. (That happened last winter) we need to do something before this winter for sure.

I wouldn’t mind having the area be mostly grass, especially between the house and garage, but at the exit, we need a place to walk when it’s wet out. We were thinking of burying larger sized stones or repurposing some brick that we plan to pull from a spot in the front yard. Sort of like this, we just don’t know what to expect as far as costs go. It’s not something we want to diy. I love the idea of hosts, day lillies and ferns in the bed by the down spout. Just a pretty wimsical garden where there’s very little direct sun light.

I didn’t think it was pertinent to show this, but maybe it will help to have a visual of how the downspout is set up. Water shoots back up where the pipe goes into that black hose and fills this bed up completely. All of this bed will be cleared out. Including the wood spacer.

I don’t think that your spot will work with the bricks inset into the lawn for a bunch of reasons. The bricks will shift unless the soil is super well drained due to freeze and thaw in spring and fall. You are looking at a high traffic area, so the grass will die from regular foot traffic just like the current grass past the end of the walk in your first photo, but more so, especially since it isn’t an ideal spot for grass between lower light levels and the snow blowing making winter exposure more severe. You really need a flat, paved walk like your current one, though wider and of a different material would be more appealing if you aren’t happy with the look of your current one.

I would remove the edging to the right along the house and plant something to help deter weeds that will be happy in those light levels such as some medium-small hosta and then mulch. I would do something similar to the area between the shed and garage, and perhaps to the left side of the walkway if mowing such a small, narrow area is a pain. You might have room for small, shade tolerant shrubs such as Hydrangea arborescens Wee White or Mini-Mauvette. If damaged by the snow blowing, either can be cut to the ground in early spring, and they will regrow quickly and bloom well in just morning sun.

I would have to agree that a buried downspout is not a good idea if you don't have a dry cistern to drain into. Instead, most folks here have a downspout that empties directly onto the lawn.

"Water shoots back up where the pipe goes into that black hose ..." The pipe is clogged. Making water from downspouts disappear into underground pipes is a popular solution, but I don't recommend it because these buried pipes are highly subject to clogging. Sometimes they are installed such that where water exits is not the very lowest point of the pipe, and this is a guaranteed clog. It's preferable to keep the drainage above grade, if possible. Typically, it would be a downspout running into a splash block. From there water would be running downhill away from the house and on to where it could exit the yard.

Insofar as "sprucing the place up," I don't think there is much hope of helping you there so far, as what the site consists of is too much a secret that we can't see. We can't see what's beyond the right end of the deck. We can't see the right and left property lines. We can't see the sum of the back yard area or the whole building layout. Though we see snippets of these things, we can't see how those snippets fit together. The easy way to show it all is to create a simple plan: outlines of buildings, paving and decks ... lot lines, tree trunks and hedge rows. Those are the basics. To back it up with photographs, you could stand roughly where that fire pit is and take a full 360* sweep/pan of SLIGHTLY OVERLAPPING pictures. Then we could see most everything in relationship to everything else.

You could use a drain auger and try to figure out whether you have a small clog near the house end of the pipe that is easily cleared or if you have an underground drain pipe that is clogged from end to end with 30 years of debris. Are all the outbuildings contemporary with the house? It's not unknown for builders/landscapers/other workers to just cut and plug unknown pipes they find in their way. An underground drainage pipe should either have an extensive underground field for the water to seep into the ground or it should have an open other end. If it just ends in a dead end underground, it's going to be a problem whenever the rain is more than the ground can absorb.

I'd think you would see where the it ends. Either the terminus is underground, where it would be damp after a heavy rain or it ends in some shrubbery.

Of course, the easiest thing would be to just to disconnect the underground part of the downspout and have a curved extension to the downspout to move the water further away from the foundation. That would be fine if you have fast-draining soil like I do, maybe not so great if you have clay, which I used to have.

Are all the outbuildings contemporary with the house?

I’m not sure what this means, but am guessing original with the house? The only outbuilding is the 8x10 shed shown in the picture. We had that installed a couple of years ago and it isn’t sitting on a foundation. My best assumption is that anything underground is going to be original with the house. The only exception to that is the sprinkler system, but my DH knows where those pipes are running and says they are on the parameter of the property line.

We could pay to have it augered, but my thinking is that it’s 30 years old and more likely in need of some updating anyways. As luck would have it we do have clay soil which is why I want to redirect it to the slope of the hill. The main part of the piping would be buried, but the end would not and would land where the woods (and a more severe slope) starts.

Yardvaark (love that name!) I have taken the pictures you’ve asked for from the spot you mentioned (along with some measurements). I hope this works as a better visual. If not, please let me know what I can do to make it better.

This is a full view of the house with the deck. Our septic system is located behind the table and chair.

This is the opposite side of the house. The lot narrows when it gets to the house and is only 108 feet wide. On this side it lands right behind that swing set where the aspen tree is.

Back to this side. The back side of the shed is exactly 10 feet from the property line.

When I go behind the shed, this is the view and those woods are on a steep incline that leads to the street. That is where the drainage pipe would end and be exposed.

Standing in the same spot from behind the shed, this is the view to the back door. The piping would come down this isle. As you can see, there is a second downspout which we believe is most likely clogged as well. It was recently suggested to us that we tie the two downspouts into the same exit drain (sorry don’t know the right term).

This space is 6.5 ft wide and the length from the spout to this corner is 20 ft..

And this is the front at an angle where you can see the slope where the end of the drain pipe will empty to.

There's a table and chairs in the grass. Is there a need for additional deck/patio space?

There seems to be a need to create permanent hard surface paths so as to link up the various steps & doors. As well as adding to the utility, it would go a long way toward making the yard look finished. Is there a hard surface path needed to the front of the house, too?

There is a need for landscape planting and permanent beds ... beds that are much deeper than the 2' or 3' beds such as the one bordering the deck.

These are things that you would begin/explore by laying them out on a plan. A simple base plan would look something like this (but of course be accurate)...

In case you take any more pictures, the camera must stay at the same location, not moving, only pivoting, in order to get overlapping photos that can be reconnected into a broad scene.