Before working on the front yard, we decided to rebuild the back decks, since the outer edges of the boards were rotted. The framing was fine, it was just the decking that was bad. So I started with the smaller of the two decks, which was the hex. For safety reasons, I only tore out a couple boards ahead of what I needed.
After the upper deck rebuild, we moved back to the front yard. Since we were going to tear down the old wall, we decided to make it wider so we could get in more plants. So the first thing was to figure out how wide we wanted it. As you can see here, I tore out the corner and block it in, but this was too narrow.
After we finished the octagon, we noticed the staircase outer stringer was also rotting. So I immediately began removing the treads and risers, thinking this would be an easy job. But after purchasing a replacement, I realized the original stringers were non-standard, meaning I have to replace the entire set!
Since I hired my contractor buddy to do the main deck because of the overall size, I don't have many pictures. But here is one that shows the extend of rot that was going on. This deck was 20 years old and was probably not maintained very well.