I think vinegar may be a viable option to kill off the heavily weeded areas. Not everything in the yard needs a complete makeover, and I am not really going for perfection. I don't mind hand weeding or spot treating the yard after it is established to push out more weeds. A few dandelions here and there are pretty. :) The back yard is our main "play turf" so to speak. My 2 1/2 year old daughter uses the area daily. We also have plans to add a deck to the back of the house next year which will increase our use of the back yard. Timeco, some important characteristics to be would be a turf that can stand up to foot traffic (not like Mall of America traffic, but a few kids playing in the yard kind), drought tolerant (sandy soil in full sun with no shade), should be able to spread at a decent rate. Do they make a dog urine resistant strand? lol. As far as color goes, I was thinking a nice green color would go well in the yard. :D I do not plan on leveling out the bumps by simply dragging the yard, but mainly by bringing in top soil and filling the low spots and raising the whole grade. Won't tilling the yard eventually create uneven settling thus resulting in bumps? The other reason to bring in top soil is to add some good rich soil for the grass to grow in. Right now the bare spots in my yard are 90% sand and gravel and the grass just doesn't like it one bit. Those spots also happen to be some of the lowest. The top soil should kill 2 birds with one stone. We have lots of sod farms in our area, I will see if I can work out a deal to buy some seed from one of them.

Re: the rehab and what I did right or wrong.... 1) I would not install sod next time in the first place. I would get the exact seed that I want and call in a hydro-seeder. 2) Really make sure to scalp the lawn. I mean cut it really short! Nothing taller than 1/2". Anything taller than that and it mats down under the top dressing which means the seed won't take because the grass underneath creates an air pocket that kills the new grass, but KBG doesn't grow through like some of the warm season grasses. 3) With KBG I'd do it in May if I had a choice. There are going to be weed problems whenever you expose fertile soil, but it is manageable. Forget about the weed issues because there is an easy solution there with KBG. But KBG takes a LONG time to come in from seed. The one thing that doesn't help is if it starts to get cold before it really starts growing well. IOW, if you wait till Sept to avoid some of the weeds and it starts to drop below 50*F in Oct, it'll be till late next spring before things start to look good again. The important issues with KBG are moisture and soil temp. May/June is best IMO. 4) Do it all in one shot! If there are low spots that will require more than the suggested 1/4" top dressing, just go ahead and fill them in. Don't wait! Have your preferred seed on hand and get that thing level the first time. This work is too strenuous to be doing it more than once. Little touch-ups later are to be expected, but get it 90% done in the first shot. 5) Anything more than 4,000sf you should try to locate a mechanical spreader for the top dressing and drag the lute or chain link around with a lawn tractor. 6) This is a point of debate, but... Currently the Orbit sprinkler heads are much better than the Rainbirds. Make sure that your sprinklers are exactly how you want them before doing anything with the lawn. And yes, sand isn't great for them, but it is pretty easy to fix. There are probably more that I'll include later.

Thank you Auteck. Whoa, your photo makes me think I wasn't really clear on the "straw" look of my grass. I mean the affected areas (basically a perfect rectangle over the tank itself and then more spotty areas over all of the gravel they must have laid and the two drywells and the hi-lo or whatever it is called), look more like your concrete walk than your lawn, in color if not texture. I'll have to take some photos but it is too late tonight and I have a busy day tomorrow. But soon... In the meantime picture a very uniformly dark green lawn with absolutely tan and dead straw lying down over the septic system. Looks for all the world like fungus damage, but it just traces the underground structures too well for it to be anything but drought stress Anyway, the soil in those areas is no more than five inches, and in some places closer to four. I had planned to build it up a few inches last year, but then realized this would cause the grass to grow up into the wooden siding of my garage. The only real solution is to bury the septic system deeper, but that is out of the question now in a practical sense, since it is already installed. My contractor made some bad choices, and I did not know enough to realize it at the time. I have given the area a good soaking, certainly deep enough to reach the concrete. So I think that now I will just keep the ground moist as if I were starting new seedlings, but to a somewhat deeper depth and with a little more tolerance for drying out of the surface until it comes back. When more rain and less heat come in late August, hopefully it will be more able to take care of itself for the next ten months. But I think the big thing is that by starting to water in any way at all a day or two after the dormancy really showed, I hope I can still save most of the young (seeded last fall) plants without needing to reseed this fall. ...which would prevent my applying Dimension to keep the Poa down... Sigh. Paul

Thanks everyone for the replies. Sorry I haven't replied for so long. Here is what I have done so far: I sprayed the entire front yard with Roundup twice over a period of 2 weeks. Last Friday I rented a sod cutter and removed all the dead sod from the front. I know several here recommended that I don't do that, but I don't ever remember hearing why. Anyway, I removed the sod, then brought in 7 yards of soil and sand. Actually it was 3 1/2 yards of topsoil and 3 1/2 yards of sand and then I mixed it with a shovel. This was the hardest part of the entire process. I lightly tilled the yard just before I spread the soil and rolled it with a landscape roller so it was nice and level. That was Friday, Saturday and Sunday. This past Wednesday, my Midnight KBG arrived in the mail. I was going to rent a slit seeder to put the seed down but I was worried that the weight would totally destroy the soil. So I used a tined rake and dragged it across the soil and then used a broadcast spreader to spread the seed. Once I got the seed down, I set the irrigation system to water twice a day, once at 9:00 AM and again at 2:30 PM for about 25 minutes. Last night we got some heavy rain for the first time in weeks. I had nightmares of waking up and finding all the soil in the neighbors yard and running down the street but I got lucky and only a little seed washed away. I have extra so I will put some down tomorrow. I also want to put down some additional topsoil on top of the seed and then put straw on top of that. Hopefully in two weeks from Wednesday I will have grass starting to grow. I will post some more pictures in a few weeks. Thanks again to all for your advice!!! Here are some pictures: After second application of Roundup Cutting and removing the sod Most of the Sod up but no soil yet Soil is down and waiting for seed. Still have some work to do between the curb and sidewalk. Picture makes the yard look more rounded than it really is. I also smoothed out the foot prints.