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

Thanks Dave! How did you design that?

I agree with PCC. You need an ARCHITECT and a LANDSCAPE DESIGNER/ARCHITECT in order to work out all the details of an architectural and landscape renovation. Meanwhile, here are some rough ideas to contemplate. (Keep in mind I have no accurate measurements, so this is theory.) One point I'm making is that, as the primary addition, a deck would be more useful than a patio.

I have not used charcoal grey or brown stains. Blues and greens do not hold up outside. Have used black and red and it was on concrete that had been surface ground with a carborundum stone grinder. The black was dark and harsh like a fresh hair dye job at first, but then faded over a year's time to a nice taupe grey, and I like it just fine. (I applied it twice and let it set overnight the 2nd time.) The red was orange rust colored and I did not care for it at all. The stains, being watery, spatter easily and stain any masonry object nearby if any gets on it. I don't know how it would stain other materials. I applied it with a broom and got fine splatter mist on nearby masonry. (It does not look horrible but I would have preferred it not happen. Slightly worse, I had areas that ran, bled and pooled into seams between pavers ... and those look like crying after an already bad mascara job.) Something that would mop it on with would probably be better. Mask off anything nearby on which you don't want stain.