Okay - hopefully I did this right with the pictures. When the kids were very small, we only felt comfortable having a deck on the opposite side of the pool furthest from the house, so no risk of someone toddling out and falling into the pool. Then when they were a little bit older, we built the one right off the house. Hopefully you can see it in the pics, but there is a step down to the pool and a little gated in area so that we can lock the gates and make the pool inaccessible.