Do you mean the slats that are supports underneath the deck?? You have to have those! That's what holds up the boards you're walking on.

Did the builder use deck screws (big ones. They're about the thickness of a sharpie marker, and are extremely long...great for holding all the beams together, and you need to also have the deck reinforced by having it screwed to the house with them too...not sure about the exact length of the screws)

When our current house was built, they built the deck and forgot to reinforce it with the big screws. When we had the stairs built on, we made sure to have the carpenter that was doing the work for us make our deck up to code.

Are the stairs coming straight off the deck, or do they wrap around the deck?

We have one railing on our deck stairs, but it wraps around our deck (which we glassed in about 4yrs ago) So we really only need the rail on the outside of the stairs.

At our last two houses, the stairs off the decks went straight off, so we had to have rails on both sides. (my mom fell off the stairs once just before the second rail was built on the deck at our first house...wasnt a bad fall, and she was in her early 30s then, so she only skinned a knee or something)

To hide the dirt underneath of the deck, you can always put some nice rock down, or plant rose bushes around the bottom of the deck and let them get a bit overgrown. (if there's a window underneath there, I suggest something brambly like roses, because if someone wants to break into the house, they're less likely to crawl thru prickly rose bushes.)

You might want to have a building inspector come out and make sure the deck was built to code and that it's safe.