Debating Concrete vs. Deck

Like everyone else dealing with a backyard space, we drew up all kinds of pro/con lists for concrete and deck. Back and forth, back and forth for a long while. The main prob was the freaking idiocy of the 3 stepped house foundation and the location of the crawlspace. It took someone very creative to figure out what to do with the whole area. Yay Oscar!

The main appeal of the deck was that if something needed doing, the boards could just be pulled out for access. Resale value - decks more appealing. But we don't think anyone's going to notice if there's a beautiful outdoor room of any type for them to be out in. And it's actually an albatross. It was sold as-is since it was in such bad shape when we got it, we actually had second thoughts about buying it. We knew we'd have to spend a LOT to fix it up. Deck life - finite. Major fire hazard.

In the end, though, concrete. Winner: we could incorporate a big band of growing area around the patios. No can do with a deck. I'm tired of having every plant in pots - a garden, yippee. Retaining wall at the steepest end to level the whole area out. It'll be wonderful to step out onto something solid. The beautiful color and slate look are great. The main con is that everything will be stepped down, so visually I'm nervous about seeing nothing out of my kitchen, since the ground will be so far down. Cracks are inevitable, they'll actually look like part of the craggy design, so we can live with that. He does really solid quality work, so there's little chance of cracking because of worksmanship - issues are earthquakes or time.

The list felt endless - at some point, I had to stop overanalysing it and just pick the one thing that appealed the most to me, and the garden was it.