Hi everyone - Thanks for the responses, much appreciated! karinl - About the shrubs...we couldn't bring ourselves to tear out more shrubs. There were six pine, three bradford pear and four wax myrtles that were removed from the front. Two tree's fell on the center bed and bed to the right under the maple taking out 10 camelia's in shrub form that had been here for 13 years according to the neighbor..we've only been here 1 1/2 years. The shrubs are 2-3' from the foundation and the tree in the alcove is around 10'. The holly's have been cut back and boxwood trimmed up..looks much better now. The cyclone is definitely an eyesore and we've been living with it for two months now but there were many tree's in the back along with overgrown azalea's, holly's and some mystery shrubs. We had someone with a backhoe come in and dig everything up...we should have our privacy back in a few weeks. I found some nice Little Gems 10-12' and ligustrums are 5' so we'll have a good start. About the wall, we won't be choosing any SRW block and are leaning towards brick or brick/stucco. I think we'll end up shortening the sides around 10' and just grade the area since it's not that bad. I have two masons coming this week to provide a quote and I've already got pricing on the brick so we'll see!

Kristen- I see a Screened Porch on the deck above to provide a dry area below. Seems like a perfect fit for your nice home...and you did say that this could be a multi-phase project :) I would add lattice work around the posts underneath and gravel as a base for storage accessed by a lattice framed door. Electronics could go against house midway back. Can't tell from the photos how much headroom you will having after excavation down to the footers. You may indeed have enough height for a use an enclosed room. Doug

Hi Weedy, Thanks for the reply-- We currently don't even walk on the deck, the beams meeting at the outside-left corner have completely rotted away and not supported by the posts... I swear it's inertia and friction holding the thing up this point... I like your idea of having just two retaining walls and leveling out the area, the trouble is that the lowest spot in my yard is not quite as low as I'd like the area under the deck to be, meaning in order to water away from the house I'd have to either build a retaining wall there or build up a small mound to provide grade. This is why I was thinking of building retaining walls on 3 sides to box in the whole area under the deck while incorporating a set of steps into one of the walls (probably right side) to keep access. For the footings, I figured I needed to 4' lower then the lowest point around me, just wanted to hear another opinion... this a lot of digging!! Regarding posts and retaining walls... my idea was that the footprint of the deck is exactly the same as the retaining wall--so are you suggesting making the deck larger then the footprint of the retaining wall, meaning the posts are set "outside" of the retaining wall? or smaller? I wasn't really expecting to gain much by incorporating posts into the retaining wall, just trying to maximize my space under the deck for storage. Currently the deck is about even w/ the window on the right side, and off by only a couple of feet on the other, so expanding the deck parallel w/ the house could only grow by 2-3' before it starts to overhang the windows (I think it's 8' now, so it could grow to maybe 10')... I could certainly grow the deck perpendicular to the house, that might be the best option, that would also allow me have more of the deck in the sun which would be nice. I'm doing a a "hybrid DIY" on the build, I'll be hiring a family friend who is a professional carpenter, so I do have hourly costs associated with the build, but all the same I'd still rather spend more now to get a better build :) Ideally I'll be getting "serious" around July 1st, applying for the permits, taking down the old deck, etc...

We are getting ready to replace our 1700 sq ft deck around our geodesic dome in Washington State. I really appreciate all the comments. I have been doing a bunch of research and asking people that build, sell decking, etc. The main concern I hear/see is fading of composite (all brands). We saw some that was sitting in a lumberyard that looked terrible--dark green and black spotted algea(it had been returned after not being used for about a year was the explanation by the worker). I am real suspious now of using composite to have a beautiful deck after even 3 years since the shaded areas could end up being hideous next to the faded ares. One contractor showed us a small composite deck in full sun that was white after about 2 years--it had started out a beautiful wood tone. The fading is an issue with all composite from what I read/hear AND you cannot paint it. You can clean it, but when you read the warrantee, pressure washing voids it on some of the brands so hopefully there is some good product (30 Seconds?) that would make this twice yearly chore easy. I understand that large amounts of money is being spent in advertising--how it lasts a lifetime, is easy to work with, uses recycled material, etc. The real test is time. What will our deck look like in 5 years and will it need replaced again because it looks bad? I have written 3 manufacturers asking for decks that I can look at that have been installed for over 5 years. So far, no response. Unfortunately, a geodesic dome like ours wouldn't look right without the raised deck, but I'm still researching.... I would think that lawsuits are going to need to happen to prevent manufacturers from lying about "cool to the touch", etc. We have had the preserved wood deck for 30 years. It requires staining about every other year (Behr) which seems high maintanence, but it lasted AND looked great.