Ok, so the old pad and the tree are fixed. I'm afraid I don't see the impediment to removing the old flagstone, however. It doesn't look all that firmly concreted it. Once you remove it, or even before you do, clear it from your brain. Don't factor it into your plans any more than you would factor in a piece of old linoleum into plans indoors. You may find that getting out there and starting to remove the yew trunks will help you mentally move past them as well. Your situation of not wanting to do much demolition is going to limit your ability to improve the area, so I would keep your installations very simple, minimal in fact, and easily reversible. The next owners of your home, or possibly you if you stay longer than you think, will eventually want to address the area as a whole, so do them a favour and yourself a favour by not making it too complicated. In addition, whatever you do is not going to be long-lasting in the conditions you have, so don't overwhelm yourself. Skip the planters and defining the area, and don't make a bunch of different areas or types of surface. You just need open space that you can enjoy that is easy to take care of. I would suggest you cover the whole unpaved area with cheap concrete slabs available at your average big box store for quite a reasonable price. Again, watch craigslist too - you never know. Watch the free and garden/materials listings. My preference is for 24x24, or 18x18, because the fewer cracks you have, the easier they are to maintain. However, those sizes are harder to handle and level than, say, 12x12. You don't give your zone, but I don't think you should do a bunch of base installation anyway - I would just put the slabs on the dirt and if you have frost heave, so be it; you can do a bit of relevelling. I say this because between tree roots and the fact that the pad will eventually be demolished by someone, there is no point in building a stellar patio that is going to be changed anyway in not too many years. There's a trick here too: you can cover the pad as well with those slabs, if you design the grade so it is just at the right height. Now, just a tip about "my husband loves the tree and the slab..." We used to have a couple of huge willow trees in the back yard that I wanted to remove. I am the gardener, and they were causing endless backbreaking work for me (long story). My husband rarely goes in the yard but looks at it out the back window all the time. "But I love those trees" he would say, from inside, while I griped about yet another day spent pruning and dealing with their litter and other constraints. It took me a while to wise up, but finally one year I enlisted him to do the pruning (they overhung the garbage area of the lane and that had to be kept clear). The trees were down within 6 months :-) Moral of the story, if he loves them, make them his headache. Why should you be sweeping and worrying about edging the concrete pad if he loves it? Let it get covered with debris and eventually disappear into the soil. He'll figure it out. Karin L

Yaardvark - that is an interesting shape for the yard instead of a rectangle and I rather like the retaining wall like it as well as the pool shape. Would be nice if we could do the attached roof, but it would have to be a later addition due to the cost and headache of completely re-framing that part of the house. Although it could use a re-work as I don't like the complexity of that part with the current connections as it seems like a potential for leaks. It is a tough one though as the chimney height may or may not be to code depending on what we do either. The ? mark one would need to lead around the house to the driveway as people usually park in front of our garage when visiting and then come to the back instead of walking through the house. I like the arbor idea, would it be too much to do one on the driveway side? thinking it would provide some screening from the neighbors on that side. Emmarene - the majority mentioned to put the pad below the retaining wall in the back. Only one drew it in. What do you mean with this statement? "The pool in general and especially with the tanning shelf appear to be an attractive nuisance. " Are you saying you don't think we should build a pool (we'd use it daily in the summer), or are you saying to not add a tanning shelf? That is the area I tend to hang out in my neighbors pool while watching the kids play. Ok here are sketches of the various layouts I've received. I'm mainly caring about placement of things and shapes right now ie hard scaping. In all the fence would be on top of the retaining wall. We are not required to have a fence around the whole pool, but placement would be nice if that is possible although we won't install one. We only need a fence to keep others out. I'm traveling now so this is from memory and sketched in. Covered patio size is close to correct size. Pathways and pool were freehand sketched and I'm not that great at it and didn't have measurements handy. Actually what we've received didn't really have measurements on them. I care a lot about what I will see when I look out the windows. I'd like minimal view blocking, or at least stuff you can look through or over. I'd like to at least be able to glimpse the outer yard as well. What I like about this one. A bit of privacy from the road with hard stuff. Although landscaping could do the same in other options. Not blocking all of the view, but some Took equipment into account Don't like so much that the pool is the focus and right in the middle of things and a long walk from the kitchen inside the house to bring stuff out to the eating area. Also not drawn as a diving pool, but I guess it could be made into it. Other thing is having the sitting area right outside the bedroom on the kids side seems less than ideal to me. I like that it has diving and a shallower area and a tanning shelf, but may be too costly. Not sold on the angle of the covered area. It will likely do good covering the sun though, except in the late afternoon and evening which we would be using it then too. Couldn't do the open gables that my DH likes on the Southwest side. This one I like the gazebo - I think it would keep the shaded areas better, but probably wastes some space. DH likes the open gable stuff though. I don't like the amount of hard surface and the pool doesn't seem right. I like the shape style, but can't really put my finger on what I don't like about it. This one has a freestanding pavilion right next to the house with the gable next to the house closed. I like the location of it as it is nice and convenient and will guarantee we always have good shade under it. Not sold on where to put the sink though. The grill could go where we currently keep it right behind the chimney as it is out of sight from inside that way. Also not sure about the freestanding part right next to the house. Did not like the pool. I think I've drawn it a bit wrong here, but it had this odd pinch point on the outside and I tried to do it here, but it is not exact. After seeing Yaardvarks sketch I'm thinking I may need to see if somebody will drive out from the cities and do a design for us as I wasn't that impressed with what I got within a 60 mile radius. Here is another pic that shows what range of the yard you see from each room. The green is from the master, The blue from dining, the purple from the other bedroom, and the red from great room French doors when sitting inside.

Check out an Equinox Adjustable Louvered Roof. They look like a pergola but the louvers open/close to let in sun or block out rain. This one is from Core Outdoor Living in NoVa. You can see more on their Houzz profile or here http://www.coreoutdoor.com/equinox/. Do a search on adjustable louvered roof installers in your area and get a quote. They're really cool and much more versatile than a plain pergola. They can be clad in anything for any design style and the functionality of being able to open/close the louvers is amazing. Plus, they're way more durable then wood or PVC pergolas b/c they're made from extruded aluminum that stand up to hurricane force winds.

@greenfish1234 Thank you again for your input. I'm attaching a better picture of the back door area. Our door is currently a slider door - not sure if that will be switched in the future to a french door. How far past the door should the steps/landing go? The further we go, the further we cut into that dead space next to our family room wall (to the right of the door). Also, the deeper the total of depth of the steps/landing combined, the deeper the bed gets to the left of the steps/landing, unless we don't make that bed as deep as the steps/landing, but not sure if that will look right. I'm also attaching a pic of landing/steps I found on line. Not that I want curved steps or that material, but was wondering if I could turn that dead space into a raised planter on the landing. That way I can soften that area. If I did this though, not sure how far to bring out the planter - just to the last step, or to the edge of the back of the family room wall. In this pic, their dead space is probably 1/2 that of mine.