The no-waste sheet
Every board cut from your build is either in the deck, in a bench, or in the planters — the offcut sheet is itemised on the handover card. A ten-by-twelve build should not leave a skip; ours leave a planter.
The shared-wall promise
Small yards share everything — drains, fences, the neighbour’s morning light. Footings stay inside the setback lines, posts never load a shared wall, and the drawing shows your neighbour’s drains before it shows your boards.
The grade advantage
Built at or near grade, your deck needs no rail by code — which is how a ten-by-twelve courtyard seats eight. We spend the guard budget on built-in benches instead, and the view stays uncut.
Services & rates
Small-yard rates — per square foot, minimums honest
Per-square-foot pricing with the small-yard truth attached: under eighty feet the fixed costs dominate the board footage, so the minimum is posted rather than hidden in a per-foot rate that lies. Every quote is fixed after the yard read, and it is the only number you will be asked to pay.
Courtyard platform, at gradefrom $57/sq ft
Under 30 in off grade · no rail required by code · benches instead
Raised small deck, with code railfrom $66/sq ft
Guards at 36 in where grade demands · sphere-tested
Composite surfacing+$9/sq ft
Where the mower grazes and the grill drips — the grease rule applies small too
Built-in bench & planter linefrom $138/ln ft
Framed structure with storage under · offcuts credited
Pergola over the courtyardfrom $5,900
Rafters to the county snow load · posts footed to frost, never to a shared wall
The minimum build$4,900
Our floor: 80 sq ft, drawn, footed and finished — below it we tell you what to buy instead
The small-build sequence
Three weeks, one yard, no skips
Small builds move faster because there is less of them and slower because there is nowhere to hide a mistake — three weeks is what doing it properly takes at this size.
Week 0 — the yard read
Forty minutes with a tape and the setback plan: what you own, what you share, where the drains run, and the grade that decides rail-or-bench. Free, and yours to keep whoever builds.
Week 1 — the courtyard drawing
Your table, your two chairs, your barbecue, drawn at scale inside the actual metres — plus the benches that replace the rail and the planters that eat the offcuts. One fixed number at the foot.
Week 2 — footings & frame
Piers to frost inside the setback lines, frame at twelve-inch centres, ledger flashed to the wall — never through it. The neighbour’s drain stays exactly where the drawing says it is.
Week 3 — surfaces & seats
Boards gapped for valley air, composite under the grill, benches built as structure with storage under, and the offcut sheet closed out on the handover card.
The evening of
We photograph at the hour you plan to eat, hand over the no-waste sheet, and leave a courtyard that seats eight on ten by twelve feet of proof.
The courtyard position
Why small is a discipline
A big deck forgives a sloppy drawing — four hundred square feet hides a wasted corner the way a warehouse hides a pallet. A courtyard forgives nothing: every board shows from the kitchen window, every footing sits a hand’s width from something that is not yours, and one mis-sized bench turns a room into a corridor. So we draw small builds harder than the big crews draw large ones — table at scale, chairs at scale, drains on the sheet — and we build them at the same footing depth and joist spacing as anything twice the size. Small is not less deck. Small is the same deck, with nowhere to hide.
The extras a small yard actually wants
Storage bench, framedfrom $640
Seat height 18 in · cushions in, hose out, offcuts in the lid
Planter line from the offcut sheetfrom $180
Built from your build · credited against the minimum
Grade-level lighting runfrom $890
Wired before the boards · path-to-step, dimmed at the seat
Privacy screen, shared-wall sidefrom $96/sq ft
To the fence line only · never loading the wall itself
Composite under-grill zone+$240
The grease rule, small-yard edition
Wicket Lane · Elm Ford · the courts between
Small builds, photographed
Six courtyards from the last two seasons, each photographed at supper time with the table the drawing promised in the frame.
Since 2018
The company, in figures
Three firms told us our yard was “too small to be worth their while.” Court & Yard measured it, drew our actual table at scale, built at grade so no rail chopped the space in half, and the whole street now eats here in August. Eight at a table on ten by twelve feet — the drawing promised, the build delivered.
The no-waste sheet sounded like a gimmick until the planters arrived made of our own deck. Nothing left the yard, the neighbour’s drain was on the drawing before the boards were, and the storage bench swallowed every cushion we own.
Our courtyard is three feet off grade at the door and they still found the code read that kept it open — a guard on the stair side only, benches everywhere else, sphere-tested where it mattered. Small-yard rules are their own rulebook and these people have read it.
We bought a lane house with a yard the shape of a table and every big builder treated it like a rounding error. Court & Yard asked for one photograph and a chair count, drew a platform that sits eight with a pergola shading exactly the supper hour, kept every footing off the shared drains, and closed the build with an offcut sheet — the planters are literally the deck’s leftovers. Total footprint: a hundred and forty feet. Evenings outside since May: all of them.
Is my yard really big enough?
If you can put a table and two chairs on it, yes. Our floor is eighty square feet — below that we will honestly tell you what freestanding option to buy instead, because a fixed-cost build under eighty feet is a bad deal for you and we would rather have the neighbour.
Do I need a rail on a small deck?
Only where the walking surface rides more than thirty inches above grade — the same code as the big builds. Built at grade, no guard is required, which is exactly how a small courtyard stays open: the rail budget becomes bench budget and the sightlines survive.
Composite or wood on a small build?
Small runs make composite’s premium smaller, and courtyards live hard — mowers, grill grease, pot feet. Cedar wins where the smell is the point and the oiling will genuinely happen. We quote both on one sheet and the offcut sheet decides nothing else.
What about the neighbours’ drains and fences?
They are on the drawing before your boards are: footings inside your setbacks, posts never loading a shared wall, privacy screens stopping at the fence line. Small yards share everything, so the drawing starts with what is shared.
Can the pergola go on the deck itself?
Yes, with the frame to match — pergola posts are carried on footings to frost and blocking in the deck frame, never bolted to a wall that was never asked to hold a sail. Rafters are computed to the county snow load; shade is the by-product of the math.
Asked over every fence on the Lane
The small-yard questions
The five that arrive with every yard photograph. Anything stranger, the yard line answers between eight and five, or yard@courtandyarddeck.example any hour — usually from a courtyard.
Free yard reads on the Lane, at the Ford and every court between · (555) 048-3326 · yard@courtandyarddeck.example · no build too small to draw
Send the photograph, keep the summer
One photo of the yard and a chair count is enough to start — the yard read is free, the drawing follows, and the fixed number is the only one you will see. yard@courtandyarddeck.example