Our house currently has no outdoor entertaining area. At our previous home we had a beautiful cedar deck that was over 700sqft. So we are really missing that!

I would like to add a deck or maybe a paved patio but location is tricky with what is existing between the placement of the septic system and leach field (dead center in the back yard) and door placement. I have a couple of ideas but not sure what would be best. Our house was originally built in 1911 and had two additions so as it stands it has three doors on the front side and two on the backside (one is a separate entrance to a dual living and one is a private access from the dual living space to back yard).

One idea I had was to switch the double window in the master suite to a French door and build an attached deck off the master bedroom (marked with M and the location of the door with a red line). There would also be easy access from the mud room door to the back and a nice walkway of some sort connecting so guests are accessing through here and not the bedroom. The height would work because the front section of the home is on a pier foundation and sits up higher. I think it would be quite nice to have access from our bedroom for coffee on the deck, yoga or late night hangout. A down side might be guests right outside our room and privacy but we really wouldn’t have people over and out there when we would need privacy.

Second option would be to build something between the mud room door and the dual living back door (marked in yellow). This seems like a good location because it has easy access for guests and the second master but this section of the house is slab on grade and steps directly out onto two small concrete pads by each door. I think the ground clearance would not allow for a deck here but possibly a nice paver patio? One problem is that this is behind the original master bath (window is frosted) and our very loud heat pump (orange line) sits here and hubby feels it would be too loud to enjoy hanging out (side note we are already considering replacing with a newer quiter smaller unit but it’s location cannot change). The hall bathroom window also faces this area and the bottom of the window is frosted (could frost the rest I suppose?). The laundry also vents in this area.

Third option would be to make a floating deck or patio away from the house. It would have to be off the section near the master and other front bedroom (due to septic) or off away from the house quite a ways on the other side of the leach field where the view is but less convenient.