Hello Houzz Community,

We bought a new house this winter, and while it has some lovely features, this side of the house is not one of them.
I think the biggest problems are that the cement sidewalk is too narrow and therefore out of scale with the house, and also, it's right up against the side of the house, which just looks plain 'ol bad.

As we have many projects to do, and of course we have a budget, I was hoping to find a solution which does not involve the expense of removing the sidewalk.

Some ideas I have include 'rock-scaping' over the sidewalk right up to the siding, then planting on the yard side of those rocks - rockery type idea. Then putting in a meandering path with some stairs further away from the house, keeping the path fairly natural looking (think steping stones with rocks used as steps in small clusters where necessary to handle the slope).

The stairs at the top pretty much have to stay as the rockery beside is lovely and I don't want to try and move those rocks, so I was thinking the new path could meander away from the house at the bottom of those stairs. Also, we will likely replace the siding at some point in the future and will coordinate that project with the installation of larger and more traditional style of widows (double-hung in sets of 3 likely....). With the new siding, we also have the opportunity to break up this large wall with different siding (ship lap below & horizonal above is one idea... ) but for now it's walk that I want to deal with.

I should note that this path to the back of the house is used infrequently so I have the luxury of keeping asthetics as priority 1. This is the side of the house seen from our driveway (front door is to the left when looking up the hill).

Thanks in advance for your ideas!