Need some home project funding advice

I've been researching for months the idea and feasibility of extending my backyard patio area and adding a small outdoor kitchen. The three main parts of the project are pouring the stamped concrete, tying into my existing patio roof to extend it, and the small outdoor kitchen build with an overhead pergola. My budget is around $20K with a contingency of about $3K for a total project budget of $23K or so.

My dilemma is deciding what is the smartest way to fund this project. We don't have any debt outside of my wife's student loan debt ($23K) and our home mortgage. We have about $40K saved which serves as an emergency fund. We also fund ROTH IRA's for the two of us annually in addition to our 401K accounts with our respective employers. My wife and I are gainfully employed and there's very little risk on the horizon of either of us losing our jobs in the near or intermediate future.

We have a quite bit of equity in our home. I've been toying around with the idea of using that to fund the project via a HELOC and leaving our emergency fund in place.

I also thought about just using the emergency fund and paying it all outright so that we do not acquire any additional debt and try to rebuild the account back up over the next few years. While doing this we can always tap into our ROTH IRAs if a dire need presents itself.

The third thing I thought of is doing a mixture of both ideas. Pay $10K or so out of my savings and fund the rest via a HELOC.

I do value and respect the advice in this forum. I've learned a lot over the years from reading the information shared. So, please help me decide what is the smartest option to proceed with funding our project.