Ours is attached. We love the look and use it a lot. More September - April than the summer months. The heat pump heats it fairly quickly. Ours is an 8x8 square.
Good to know, I think I am going to ask to change mine to 8'x8', I also might make my sun-shelf a little larger.
We have tall and short folks in or family, so we did deeper and shallower benches in ours. Think about where your screen and projector will be and make sure YOUR depth bench faces the projector.
Pretty sure his is on a hill and is covering costs there. They add up pretty quick (retaining walls). 1200 sqft of decking is quite a bit. I think his quote is pretty typical for what he had going in. Only way to know for sure is to get a few quotes. I had about 5 and they all were within 10-15% of each other.
So they aren’t doing a retaining wall, they are doing about a 3’ high by about 54’ long exposed wall they will finish with stone along with the Hot Tub. I’m assuming this still adds a good amount to the cost. Not sure how much though.
I don’t have a retaining wall either. I understood what you meant originally. Mine is 12-18” exposed and it’s on the backside where landscaping will go so it not getting anything fancy on it. But yeah the more exposed beam the more expensive especially if it’s finished with fancier materials.
