We have just bought our first house, and are hoping to remove the decking in our small garden (around 3m X 5m), as well as the concrete below, and create a small lawn and borders.
We have removed a few of the decking planks, and can see that underneath is a raised concrete area over approx half of the garden, and what looks to be some paving slabs on the other half. Next door is also decked, and looking beneath our decking I can see that the fence between the gardens does not reach the ground, as it is in-line with the decking on both sides. As such, if we remove our decking, there will be a gap between the fence on our side, and the ground.
Our decking is pretty high, so it's about a foot higher than the lowest point of the paving below.
We are planning on paying someone to remove the concrete and would like to lay topsoil and turf (the plan is to do this ourselves to save costs). Can we use some of the decking planks to block the gap between the fence and ground level? It's not visible from the neighbours side so I'm reluctant to pay for new fence panels (I think they are ours as the back faces our garden).
Or could we retain some of the broken-up concrete as hardcore and lay topsoil over this? Does the lawn even sound feasible?!
Help! We're new to all this and I really want to get rid of the decking and concrete, but I also don't want to rip up the decking and be stuck....