I am in the middle stages of completely renovating my 1/4 acre (~5000 sf. of lawn). We just bought the place 8 months ago and the previous owners were terrible people who didn't care for the lawn at all. (sort of a joke) Here is what I have done and will be doing: 1. Round up everything (did this about four weeks ago). Let the whole lawn die. It did. Turned brown and crispy after about two weeks. 2. Mow it to the lowest possible setting and get rid of all of the dead weeds.(no need for me to save them, but you can if you want) 3. Rent an 8 hp rear-tine tiller. The soil was so compacted that it took 3 passes over the entire 5000 sf area to till it down to a depth of 4-6". I could have gone over it again, but I ran out of time. (if you rent on a Friday, you get it all weekend and only pay for one day). 4. Threw away about 10 old sprinkler heads and many feet of old hose that I didn't know was in my yard before I started tilling. Apparently, someone at some time in my home's life actually liked the yard and cared for it. Oh well. The system was very old and the control box and valves had long been removed after the interior was completely remolded. I'll have a new system installed next year when I have more time to run that project. 5. Dug three 16" trenches to bury my downspouts. This involved about 100' of trenching with a shovel. Tip: If you are going to do this, rent a trenching machine!!! Buried the pipe and dug small dry-wells for the emitters. Daylight the one pipe next to the driveway. The following tasks will be completed over this weekend and the next: 6. Having 25 cubic yards of 50/50 topsoil/compost delivered on Friday. 7. Rented a t-70 bobcat to move and spread the new topsoil around my yard to a depth of ~2". 8. Roll the new topsoil and make sure everything is graded properly and is flat. Not changing the grade (drainage is fine), just applying a uniform new layer of topsoil on top of the already tilled topsoil and rolling. 9. Spread about 100 lbs of Rebel tttf over the rolled soil. Rake the whole mess lightly to ensure good seed/soil contact. Roll (with empty roller) to ensure even BETTER seed/soil contact. Spread Lesco starter fert over the seed/soil Light application of straw (never hay) to retain moisture. Just applying enough so I can still see dirt through the straw. Setup the two Claber 8410 Aquadue Duplo Dual Hose Water Timers at the front and back hose bibs. Set them to water each of the four zones three times per day for 15 minutes. These will be putting water through one and three Gilmore Pattern Master sprinklers. Drink a six pack of Miller Lite and pray pray pray.

morspheuspa & ronalawn82, thanks for your follow-ups! I appreciate both of your posts! I just finished up my RU'ing this AM. My backyard has a fence on the back-side, so that was not a problem. One side, I used cardboard and of course I know my neighbors well and communicated with them. They said "no problem, we're not picky" and were nice. The other side has a large elite home with a backyard that is awful (their backyard is next to my yard). I just sprayed carefully inside my "border string" there, since their yard is crud I'm not worried. I could even seed for them! It's supposed to rain in 2 hours. The RU bottle says "rain proof" in 5 minutes, so I hope that it will still take care of my grass and weeds!

Oh that makes me feel good. I was looking at my lawn this morning and we had some rain (thank god!). I have been only keeping my lawn very damp and it actually has been dry in between waterings due to well issues. Anyways I seeded the same day as you (Labor day?). I noticed on Sunday some grass starting to germinate around the sprinkler heads where it has been a little wetter. Since then, it has started germinating more in the yard, although a lot of areas I still see nothing, which I simply am hoping is a function of *less* water and not that the seeds have died from lack of water. Hopefully. Anyways - I think I will see a lot happen in the next few days. Thankfully, this rain has given my well a chance to recuperate, provided a nice soaking for the entire lawn, and the next few days are supposed to be in the low 70's which will help keep the moisture on the lawn instead of evaporating like it did last week when it was in the low 90's. Keeping my fingers crossed!

Thoughts, yes. Guarantees, no. I am an organic kind of guy, so I'm going to tell you how I would approach it. I would apply ordinary corn meal, scattered by handfuls, over the poor spots. Then I would reseed a day or two later. If you have any problems with the soil, the corn meal should clear that up. Unfortunately the corn and new seed are not a perfect match, but I would do it anyway. KBG will spread into the poor areas IF the soil is okay, and the corn meal should help fix that. Then anything you get from new seed would be a bonus.