Wish you would have found this site before you moved into the house. The results you are getting would be expected for the treatment you are giving the lawn. TW, the previous poster, wrote a little pamphlet called The Bermuda Bible. Search the Internet for it and follow it. Assuming you have a high pH soil, here's what you're doing wrong. You are blaming your problems on cheap grass. Well, the grass may have been relatively inexpensive but the grass is not cheap. The bermuda seed you are planning to buy is cheap grass. The sod that was put down is an improved hybrid bermuda that does not produce seed heads. When you are taking proper care of it, it looks amazing. Cure for hard soil Buy the generic brand of baby shampoo at Wally's. Measure your lawn. The app rate is 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet. If your lawn is 4,000 square feet, you need 12 ounces of soap. Put that amount into your hose end sprayer and set the dial to 3 ounces per gallon. Spray that on your lawn until it is gone. Then irrigate the lawn. Apply a full inch of water. Since your soil is currently hard, I would expect the water to run off after about a minute. As soon as you see runoff, stop watering and wait for 15-30 minutes. Then continue watering until you see runoff again or until you get a full inch of water down. The irrigation will carry the soap down into the soil where it will soften your soil. Actually all the soap does is help maintain a more even moisture level deeper into the soil. Then next week water without the soap. The week after that, repeat the soap and water again. That should do it for your hard soil. Soil is supposed to be hard when dry and soft when moist. And it should absorb water like a sponge - meaning it should run off at first and then suck it up like a, well, sponge. Your builder didn't do anything to the soil before he planted grass. Cry me a river. He didn't do anything for the rest of the lawns in your neighborhood either and they're doing fine. You don't have to do anything to the soil before you plant sod. You're supposed to water (properly), mow (properly), and fertilizer (properly) after the sod is down. For bermuda you should water it no more frequently than once a month in the cool season and work your way up to every 7 days when the temps approach 100 degrees. If you are in soft sand with an arid breeze blowing off the mountains, then you can water every 5 days in the heat of summer. When you water go for a full inch every time. If you get an inch of rain then you don't need to water. If you get 1/3 inch of rain, then you need to add 2/3 of irrigation. Bermuda needs to be mowed at least every week and preferably 2x per week. Mow it at 1.5 inches or lower. If that setting scalps the lawn, then you have other issues which can be fixed. Bermuda needs to be fertilized with lots of nitrogen every month to look its best. Forget about weed n feed products. They don't do what you think they will do anyway - waste of money. Use a real man's fertilizer and a real man's weed killer. Don't fertilize in the spring until you mow real grass (not weeds) for the second time. Fertilizing before that time is a waste of money. Why? Because fertilizer works through the roots. If you don't have grass growing, the roots aren't taking up nutrients. Once you get grass growing, then hit it with high N fert every month until about Thanksgiving. NOTE TO OTHER READERS - THIS IS ONLY FOR BERMUDA. Hope this helps. Read the Bermuda Bible.

Afraid you are basically screwed, and you did it too yourself. In your area there are 3 types of grass you can grow. Bermuda, but in your case with shade issues is eliminated. Zoysia might work depending on the sun light. #1 grass for your area is Saint Augustine, and the best variety with shade issue is Palmetto. Now here is where you screwed yourself. All of the 3 above are from sod. Well you can get Bermuda and Zoysia seeds but the varieties offered in seed are fairly low quality. There is no such thing as Saint Augustine seed for sale. So what kind grass seed did you plant? My guess is you bought some from a Box Type Store and most of it is a cool season grass which will not work in FL. You want a nice yard? Then buy you some Saint Augustine sod. As for Bitter Blue SA, if given the choice between Bitter Blue and Palmetto, I would not even hesitate and go with Palmetto. Palmetto has finer texture, deeper color. better shade and cold tolerance, and less pest and disease issues.

what type of grass are you wanting to seed?

I can see you really want to amend the soil. And by that you probably want to rototill the amendments in. I would like to caution you against that. If you want to change the soil chemistry or biology, you almost always do that from the top. If the grass dried out and died, then it was probably St Augustine. What grass do you have out front? If you get new grass are you going to water it? Because no grass can look good without at least weekly watering. Sod would give you an instant lawn but you have too water, mow, and fertilize it or it will go back to what you have now.