As part of the Casa de Cowboy rebuild (which I think should really be called the Palacio de Cowboy because Casa doesn't really convey the full scope of the stuff we're finding), we're extending the house a bit as per the photo below. This used to be a brick patio that went up to the side of the house, you can see the remains on the left.

 

 

 

 

We'd like to reinstate the patio, which soaks up the sun and radiates the warmth back well into the evening, however for waterproofing purposes the fibrolite cladding has to be brought down to the level of the yellow lines in the picture. This means that it's below ground level, or at least below patio level, and we can't bring the patio right up against the cladding.

 

 

Does anyone have any ideas on how we can restore as much of the patio as possible? The builder is looking into how close we can go to the house wall in a code-compliant manner, but it seems a bit vague. And we definitely want the warm brick patio back, not a narrow deck or something similar.