Destination deck

 Our house backs up to a big greenspace, and our yard slopes steeply down towards it. It tends to be wet and marshy down there, due to a small creek. Soon after we bought the house, we brought in several dump trucks full of dirt to fill in the yard and make it a bit more usable. But it's still pretty small. It'll work for five years or so, but we are always looking for ways to get more use out of the space we have, because we love spending time outside.

Hubby came up with the idea for a tiny, second deck near our new sign. It hangs over the steep edge of our yard and makes the useless space functional. The adirondack chairs we got on clearance at Joann fabric store for $27 each! And they even came whitewashed already. 

We decided to paint the deck one of the colors in our sign to unify the look a little. The color we chose is called 'head to the beach'. Love it. 

We are hoping to build a short railing of some sort across the back since the drop-off is pretty steep- but we aren't sure yet what would look good on this funny little deck. Hubby also plans to add some stairs to the left side to make it seem bigger. 

There is a small, ornamental tree to the left of the deck that provides a bit of welcome shade during the hot afternoons- the only shade we have out back. 

This spot provides a 180 degree view of the entire yard, so it's much easier to see the kids while they play than on our upper deck. 

On a side note, here's our pretty new banana tree from my parents! It's a hardy banana, so it grows here in the NW but doesn't produce fruit. Just gives a great tropical look. They get super tall, too- and if you plant them in the ground they multiply like crazy. Even in the pot ours already has three baby shoots starting.