Hi Everyone! I'm hoping you can lend some advice. I am planning on adding a deck or a patio to my house in the spring, and I'm looking for some help on where to actually put it. My biggest problem is that there's an existing patio off the back of the house, but it's very, very small and has a roof over it. I don't have a budget to remove or extend the roof, so I'd like to remove the railings, and somehow extend the deck if possible. Another area of concern is not to take up too much yard space because I have a large dog and other friends with doggies. They like to romp in the back yard... which is about 60 feet by 40 feet. The third area of concern is that the height of the roof along the edges is very low... about 7 feet. If I were to build on top of the existing concrete, I might not have enough clearance for tall friends to not bang their head... so that's an issue.

A friend suggested using the existing patio as a "hallway" and adding built in seating to each side (or porch swings, etc), and then stepping off the patio, and building a large circular area in the center of the yard as a focal point. I was leaning more towards sticking the deck against the house to save the yard space.

I am open to any and all suggestions, thanks for taking the time to read this!