Crazy paving to lawn...?

[gardenwoe]

Hi, wondered if any garden/landscape experts could help?

Our small garden is completely paved with crazy paving, and is looking very tired, cracks forming where the pointing is so old, and generally looking old fashioned and rubbish.
I dream of a small lawn, and some flower beds, being south facing the paving just seems to absorb heat.
We have found someone to create a small raised patio area near the house (due to the way our house is, there are five steps up to our back door) and then would like a step down and to turf the rest.
We are working to a bit of a budget so DH is going to do a lot of the grunt work, and yesterday started getting up the crazy paving. (Builder wants to use this to fill the void of the raised patio area) Under the crazy paving appears to be more hardcore. My question is - does all of this also need to come up? Or will we be able to have a load of soil chucked down and then it flattened and turf put down on top? (We will get someone in to do that)
Thanks to anyone that can advise

Hi gardenwoe, I imagine all of the paving will need to come up unless you clean them up and then you could get artificial grass and the installers could cut around the paving to keep it.
Have you considered artificial grass before? Much easier than normal grass - I went with Maze Grass UK and couldn't recommend them enough they did a great job!

Thanks, we did consider artificial grass, my kids wanted Astro being big football fans! However being south facing, artificial grass in my experience gets ridiculously hot. Part of the reason for wanting lawn is to cool it down a bit.
All of the paving will come up, it's more a question of does all the rubble/hardcore need to come up too?

Yes, I think the hard core will have to go, otherwise there will be very little depth of soil for a lawn, and it will dry out very quickly in the summer resulting in the grass dying. A bit of a pain, but if you're going to do it, do it properly.