I would think for pavers you could just level it with sand or stone dust, since there is already a rigid surface underneath. You might need a lip at the back, I can’t tell hat is there now.
Run a compacter over it, lay the pavers, and you are golden. Easy peasy… 
Or just use stone dust to fill the low spots, put down the pavers, and let it have a slight slope. 1 inch over 16 feet would be barely noticeable.
Now that I think about it, if you pour concrete, you are going to have to give it some sort of slope so water will run off. It might not wind up any flatter than it is now.
I was thinking they had given the ok to not have the lower driveway as a parking spot, after all. I must have dreamed it.
Wow, the sump pump near-nightmare. You sure avoided some deep s*** on that one!
The transformation to the front of the house with the cage gone is dramatic. It is such a huge improvement, and the house looks crisp and appealing!
The bath is looking very sharp. When you were first looking at floating vanities my concern was the lack of storage space, but these look quite spacious. Love the shower floor!
cb, everything is looking really good. I can’t believe the difference to the front of the house with the cage gone.
The Pooper Shooter is Working!
Finally (after another record breaking 7 trips to Home Depot in one day), all the plumbing and venting pieces and parts are all connected and we were able to test the sewage sump pump. It is a glorious day - especially after we found the internal pipes were broken yesterday and we had to find replacements.
We ran a hose down the bathroom sink pipe sticking out of the wall and, right on cue, when the basin got filled to a certain point there was a very faint pump sound (this thing is very quiet) and a big whoosh and we could hear water flowing through the main sewer line. Success!
Wednesday morning is our big triple threat building inspection. I’ll report back how we do!
Meanwhile, painting crew is starting to scrape, sand and prep everything for painting. I’m happy to say that one of our CC gang, Marilyn, gave me her left over a pale grey deck stain and so that is going to be our wood decking color. The metal railing is going to be a slightly darker gray and I’m hoping it will blend in and be ‘neutral’.
Installed a door handle on one of the doors to see how they look. I was very worried that the extremely contemporary door handles would not look good on the traditional doors (but they will look good on all of the new doors). Luckily I think they look great because the door handle back plate is the same square shape as the panels in the original doors.
Loaded a few photos
I like the square brushed nickel door handle sets!
Me too!
Passed inspection.
No issues wirh framing or shear walls.
One issue with electrical. Turns out that all smoke detectors in house, including upstairs old rooms, have to be hard wired and run on the same wire. He passed us but electrician had to open up some ceilings and fix it after he left. Luckily he insisted on being present during inspection.
Unfortunately we had an issue with kitchen island venting coming down through crawlspace. Have to fix it. But he said to go ahead with insulation and he’ll check the vent rerouting when he comes for insulation inspection.
Onward towards closing up with drywall!
Sounds like you have a pretty reasonable inspector since he’s allowing you to proceed with insulation. That’s great news on the framing and shear walls. It won’t be long before you can list this house.
The inspector was very reasonable. He walked right past the closed doors on the remodeled bathrooms upstairs and didn’t ask.
He didn’t even ask us to test the sewage sump pump for him. We even had the hose ready running through the floor in case he asked. It was all very quick. He was very impressed with the staircase construction and the step lights! We thought for sure he was going to make us pull some circuits out of the sub panel and back them up to the main panel, but he was OK. We have a large main panel that was put in with the Airport Authority HVAC system - 200 amp panel, but the sub panel downstairs was original from the 1972 remodel.
I’m glad the inspector was so laid back. You deserve a break, especially after the week you’ve had.
Cb, awesome news! 
Thank goodness there are reasonable inspectors out there.
Rumor has it that we are very lucky in Point Loma with a really good building inspector. There is an inspector up in the Pacific Beach area that walks in and if one thing is wrong he turns around, walks out, and refuses to even complete the inspection. Rinse and repeat over and over again.
I think that we have so much construction going on in our neighborhood right now that the inspector needs to go through as fast as he can and focus on the critical issues. Also, if he knows you/crew and knows the quality of the work he starts trusting certain types of details. For example, he did not spend any time looking at the shear walls (we have been there, done that), but focused on the staircase construction, smoke detectors and the plumbing which is very reasonable because these are the types of things that are true health and safety issues.
We did have an issue where the original 1972 addition construction had an exterior light switch for the lights on the upper deck that was positioned on the other side of the room, away from the sliding door. This was for the two lights outside the master bedroom, not the majority of lights outside the living room. This is not to code… the switch has to be near the exit door. But, I explained it was the location of the switch to begin with from the 1972 construction and was passed in 1972. He let it pass, because the house has been like that for 40 years. But, he was a stickler about all the smoke detectors, even the old ones upstairs, being hardwired on same circuit - as he should. So, the switch location is just a nuisance, but the smoke detector wiring is a safety issue.
He was very nice. We did not technically pass the plumbing inspection because one of our air vents (complicated kitchen island vent) needs to be redone. He even spent time up in the kitchen (and didn’t mention that the new plumbing in kitchen wasn’t in the plans) and down below helping us come up with a solution because there is no wall to run the vent up through to the roof - it needs to run in the crawlspace for awhile and tie into an existing bathroom vent that is going up through the roof. But, he said to go ahead and start the insulation if we want, just don’t insulate around the vent area. He’ll do the insulation inspection and the plumbing inspection together next time he comes.
I’m so glad to hear the inspector is reasonable and helpful.
The glass backsplash in the kitchen got installed today! Boy, the glass guy was literally sweating buckets installing it because he has not really done a glass backsplash before. Not to mention there was no breeze and it’s incredibly hot and humid and weird weather here. He kept insisting (when I ordered the frosted glass - extra cost of course!) that it would be clear and not have a color ‘hue’. Well, it has a blue hue. At first I didn’t like it, but everyone loves it. Had 4 agents pop in today (including my agent) and they all loved it.
Painted out the upper deck and 3 coats of metal paint on the railing. In the end I felt that the grey tone of the metal railing paint was too dark, kind of strange and I was going to spend time and money changing it. But my agent likes it and told me to not worry about it and move on.
Painting team has been prepping the exterior and we have discovered that whoever painted the house before did a really terrible job. There is a lot of bubbling of the dark paint on the stucco. We have scraped out large portions of the paint and found that the stucco is chalky. Lots of expensive sealer has been applied and I hope we have solved the problem. Then they discovered that the white paint on the wood siding in entry alcove was painted right over oil-based wood stain. Those two don’t mix. The white paint can literally be peeled off by hand. We will need to apply an oil based primer to repaint that area.
Installed the bathtub and the bath/shower plumbing today. And, the guys came early and cleaned up the whole area around the sump pump in the crawl space because there were dangerous gaping deep holes in the area and I was really worried that it was too dangerous for guys to try to install insulation in that area. All fixed up and looking great! They even made a plank walkway to get to the water heater.
We are about halfway done with installing huge amounts of insulation. Trying to get our insulation inspection Monday morning so that we can start dry walling right away.
Photos Loaded
FABULOUS!!!
BUDGET UPDATE
Well, I finally emptied out the purse and caught up on logging all the receipts.
Today we hit the $100,000 spent mark and honestly, the house does not look like $100,000 has been spent!!
Now that all framing, stucco repair, etc. is done… looks like about $24,000 spent so far to convert the downstairs which includes lumber, materials, about half of the drywall and insulation materials, some major stucco repair, labor, windows, doors and interior doors.
Plumbing = looks like about $2,600 spent (including sump pump) for downstairs plumbing. But, I swear I have about $300 worth of ABS pieces and parts lying around that can get returned
Electrical = it’s hard to break out which portion of electrical costs belong to downstairs because we rewired the whole house. But, it looks like about $4,000 in materials and labor between reconfiguring the upstairs closet areas, wiring staircase, lighting and rooms, wiring smoke detectors, installing Arc Fault special circuit breakers and redoing the entire panel downstairs.
So, ballpark to gain 800 sq ft looks like about $31,000 and counting. Still have to pay for drywall installation, painting, lighting, flooring, etc.
I’m so happy you like the backsplash, it was a real splurge and I was second guessing the value of spending the money.
The total cost for glass and install was $586. I think it can be done a lot cheaper but a) I was scared to order the glass myself and get something wrong with my measurements, b) I was definitely scared to try to install it ourselves (carpenter begged me to have a professional come in and not make him have the pressure of breaking the glass), and c) I really couldn’t find anyone else that would do it. This was the most reasonable solution I could find in the time I had available to research.
Definitely more reasonable than my shower door company who actually sent me a written quote of $5,500 for those two small pieces of glass installed. Geez… no thanks
I kind of quizzed two of the local agents that stopped by to see what their gut feel was for potential sale price. They mumbled ‘high 9s’. Sometimes I have to take it with a grain of salt because they know that they will not get the listing to sell, so their only hope is to bring buyers to make any money. And they might have buyers that are in a certain price range, such as ‘under a million’, so they want you to price it for their buyers.
But at least ‘high 9s’ is a very good number, I’m happy with that.