We're also in Oakland but used to live at 26th and California in the city for decades. Assume your lot is small and the soil can be poor, so you need to draw your lot to scale and figure out what you want from it. Seating on those rare nice days? Play area for kids? BBQ area for grilling? Flowers? Veggies? The options are endless but your space is limited. THe majority of your budget will go to hardscape unless you are lucky enough to have precisely what you want already. Plants are cheap and seeds even cheaper. There are no really good nurseries in SF. Sloat is barely passable and the others are worse. The closest "serious" nursery is Golden in San Mateo, a superb nursery right off 101 that is sitting on at least $1M of prime real estate - I'm sure that even now, the developers can hardly wait for the family to consider selling, LOL. The East Bay has Berkeley Horticultural and East Bay Nursery, plus Evergreen in San Leandro. Richmond (city of) has Annie's Annuals, a local fav whose website you should check out. She will be having her open house garden party soon, in May I think. She's the source for many terrific heirloom plants that do well here, including the stunning Ladybird poppy, one of the few annuals that I will buy. Contra Costa and Marin have some good Navlet's garden centers, a local chain, but nothing really near you. Don't overlook the big box stores, some of them have decent garden centers with cheap prices on basic stock. If you arrive when the stock is fresh, their plants are fine. EVERYBODY gets their stock from the same three major wholesalers; the private nurseries aim for more specialized plants and a better quality level on the standard plants. Because of this, even when you finally decide what you want and where you want it, don't expect to be able to buy every plant you're interested in. The growing stock comes in at specific times during the year, and special ordering is very costly (I've done it, and it isn't fun when a $250 4-ft tree dies). If you're into cottage gardening, the forum here is very active. I posted recently in the Gallery section of that forum, as spring has brought a lot of blooms in the last month. I don't find the CA Gardening as interesting, but it's more weighted towards edibles and Southern/rural CA gardening, which doesn't apply to me, but YMMV. You might also want to check out the Landscape Design forum. Bahia, a professional landscaper who works out of San Jose, does a lot of beautiful succulent installations and has been recently posting pictures of some of his work. Really remarkable stuff, very inspiring.

I would get a good general contractor in there pronto, or a structural engineer.

This change is probably doable, but will involve some significant work to keep the structural integrity. The post you want to remove is certainly load bearing. To replace it you will have to install robust support posts on either end of the span, and then install a beam between them that can support the weight. In most new homes they are using manufactured wooden LVL beams instead of steel beams, although you can probably still get steel beams. The challenge is that you would want the bottom of the beam to be as high as possible, so you need to remove or modify existing framing to recess it as much as you can. LVL beams are generally taller for longer spans, although in some cases they can be doubled up (width) to carry a bigger load. However, the beam will be relatively bulky for a span that long. If you like the look of reclaimed lumber you may be able to install a new LVL beam and then glue on a veneer of reclaimed lumber (maybe 1" thick) to make it look like the entire beam is reclaimed lumber. When I hired a contractor to open my floor plan and install new beams it was very easy for him to figure out span length and sizes, since the manufacturers had good documentation. However, the city required me to have the plans reviewed by a PE, who signed off and stamped the plans. It was a waste of time, since my contractor understood the work better than the PE, but the PE had the right credentials and the official stamp. Bruce

It's a tub deck with an undermout tub. A stone yard can help you out, as can a stone fabricator. It can indeed be cut from a single slab to avoid fabrication joints, and yes, the remnant off-cuts can be used elsewhere. Tub decks can also be fabricated from four individual pieces, just like assembling a frame. If going that route, you may be able to source enough stone to fabricate the four pieces from by checking out the remnant area at stone yard or at a stone fabricator's shop. Remnants are generally discounted from full slab prices. The success of either path may be dictated by the stone itself. Some stone can be seamed with the seams being near invisible. Stone with heavy veining, significant movement, or dynamic color variations can look jarring and disjointed when seamed.