rt-541

projects / backyard

Backyard

The back yard of a brick ranch, laid out from drone photos: a new composite deck at the back slider, a 16 ft buff flagstone patio off its side with a round fire apron and stone ring, a raised herb bed, a quiet screen around the AC, a stone walkway around the deck, a row of American Pillar arborvitae along the back fence and a French drain along the side that floods. Most of it is contracted, so the drawing set is also the bid package.

// 3d model

Photo-style view of the backyard from the north
From the north: the plan's model rendered in Blender, then turned into a photograph by FLUX.1 Kontext on the homelab GPU. How it was made →
Render of the deck, patio and fire ring from the northwest
From the northwest: the deck at the slider with its walkway, the stone patio and fire ring off its west side, the raised herb bed and the AC screen along the house.
Render of the stone patio with the fire ring, the herb bed and the deck
The patio: buff flagstone, the round apron and stone fire ring with six chairs on the patio's corner, the raised herb bed and the AC screen along the house.

The model and the drawings come from the same Python module (cad/plans/backyard.py): the grade is a plane falling to the north and east, and every stair, clearance and quantity is computed from it. Twenty-nine checks run on every export: stair risers, joist spans and cantilevers, post spacing, the fire ring's position and its chairs fitting the apron, the herb bed standing off the brick, the AC screen's clearances, the tree gaps and the drain's fall.

// by the numbers

deck
25 x 20 ft composite
patio
16 x 16 ft flagstone
fire
52 in stone ring
rough total
$26k to $55k

// what was decided

The deck stands at the sliding door in the bay, with its outer corners cut at 45 degrees and a vented composite skirt, the Blackstone and the smoker along its east rail, and one stair down its west side to the patio. It stands on its own. The house is brick veneer, which cannot carry a ledger, so two three-ply beams on piers 42 in deep hold it, with the joists cantilevered toward the wall and notched around the chimney and the bay. It runs from the chimney to near the east corner, with the slider its only door. Shade is two cantilever umbrellas bolted to blocking in the frame.

The stone is one buff flagstone throughout: a 16 ft square patio off the deck's west side, a walkway around the deck's other two sides, and a ring of wall stone on a round apron centred on the patio's northwest corner for the fire, wrapped on its north half by an 18 in stone seat wall. The outdoor sofa set lives on the patio. The same wall stone makes the raised herb bed, which stands off the brick so no soil touches the veneer, and the AC hides behind vinyl lattice over mass-loaded vinyl that damps its hum toward the patio and needs no upkeep, left open to the west and on top so the unit still breathes. The trees are five American Pillar arborvitae, which grow tall but stay about 4 ft wide, in one row straight out from the slider.

// the drawing set