If you are willing to start completely over, then yes, wait until August, not September. In your area the summer heat should break earlier than September but that is what you want to watch for. Evening temps will start to fall. The heat might return, but when it starts to fall, that is the start of...well, fall. Ignore the grubs. Any damage they caused was over and done last summer. They are dormant now and not feeding. There is a test for grubs which you can do in late June. Dig up a full square foot of the surface and count the grubs. If you see fewer than 12, then cover it back up and forget about it. Normal gardens will not be affected by a low number of grubs. Don't waste your money or time unless you see a dozen or more. You don't have crabgrass. Crabgrass is just now starting to sprout and only in full sun and only where you get continual moisture on the soil. You might have another weed but it is not crabgrass. If you can post a picture that would help to identify it. Take it in the shade or early morning before the sun hits it. Grass pictures are always better on cloudy days. Don't know what your lawn looked like, but you likely did not need to dethatch. It sounds like you're getting advice somewhere else (a magazine???). You also do not need to aerate. If your soil is hard when it is wet from irrigation, then you may need to soften it but aeration is not the best path for that. Sure, it is sold as that, but it does not work as advertised. A better solution is to use clear shampoo. Please search this forum for clear shampoo and you'll see plenty of description about how it's done. The only grass that will work for you in your shade is fine fescue. It is a bunch type grass which does not spread out to form a dense carpet. Each seed makes one plant. The only way to make it dense is to put out more seed. The problem with putting out seed this time of year is the crabgrass (true crabgrass) is germinating at the same time. Fescue takes 2 weeks to germinate. Crabgrass takes 1 week. You'll put out the new seed, water it daily 3x per day, see the new seed sprout in a week, and think joyously that your new grass is coming in. It will be the crabgrass. Crabgrass IS a sod forming grass that will spread into every bare or thin spot it can find. This is the reason you want to 'densify' your fescue in the fall. The only fast way to get more fescue is to put more seed down...in the fall. Testing your soil is probably a good idea. You seem to be anxious to do it right. It is very easy for someone to give you advice to apply lime, but only a soil test will tell you how much, when, and what kind. Here are the basics of lawn care Water deeply and infrequently. Deeply means at least an hour in every zone, all at once. Infrequently means monthly during the cool months and no more than weekly during the hottest part of summer. If your grass looks dry before the month/week is up, water longer next time. Deep watering grows deep, drought resistant roots. Infrequent watering allows the top layer of soil to dry completely which kills off many shallow rooted weeds. Mulch mow at the highest setting on your mower. Most grasses are the most dense when mowed tall. Bermuda, centipede, and bent grasses are the most dense when mowed at the lowest setting on your mower. Dense grass shades out weeds and uses less water when tall. Dense grass feeds the deep roots you're developing in 1 above. Fertilize regularly. I fertilize 4 times per year using organic fertilizer. Which fertilizer you use is much less important than numbers 1 and 2 above.

Where in Utah are you? Fescue uses less water than KBG, but not a lot less. If you're looking for the lowest water usage, there are native grasses that use far less water than fescue. They look a little different, but still make a decent lawn. Buffalo grass and blue grama are gaining in popularity, but if you're on the Wasatch front, they'll have a short green season (probably not turning green until sometime in May and turning brown in October). Both of these are sort of a gray green color. The following are all cool season grasses. Crested wheatgrass is another grass that is gaining traction as a low water lawn grass. I don't like the looks of it as well as a few that don't get as much visibility (it's also not a native, but is adapted to our area). It's sort of a yellowish green. One advantage it has over some of the other choices is that it is much less expensive per pound of seed and there are more seeds per pound. I've been overseeding my lawn with western and streambank wheatgrass and have recently added sheep fescue to the mix. They should stay green with little additional water. I'm planning to cut back to watering once every two to three weeks once these have completely overtaken the lawn. The streambank wheatgrass is a light green, the western wheatgrass is blue green and the sheep fescue is somewhat blue. If you're interested in these, let me know and I'll post links where you can find seeds. There's a place in Salt Lake City that sells Streambank wheatgrass seed (and for much less than I've seen anywhere else). One drawback to planting now (unless you go with buffalo or grama) is that the grass won't have much time to get established before the heat of the summer kicks in. You may end up seeding again in the fall.

You asked good questions. Don't over seed anything. If you currently have hybrid bermuda, then seeded bermuda will be a permanent weed. Those are two different plants related only by a biological technicality. But I'm not convinced that's bermuda. From this altitude and distance you should not be able to see bermuda blades. That might be St Augustine or a coarse zoysia. Do you see runners criss crossing over top of the soil? That would indicate St Augustine. What kind of trees are those? (sorry I'm ADD sometimes) That's a flat lawn. When you water, watch carefully for puddling. Mark those spot somehow and watch how long it takes for the water to drain away. If it doesn't puddle or they drain away in an hour, you're fine. You just can't have water standing in one place for days at a time. That would require a different approach from the start. And now is the start, so watch for puddling to see if you need to do this other thing first. I'm not going to mention it unless I have to. You have plenty to deal with right now. Grass care is pretty easy when you boil it all down. You need to water, mow, and fertilize. If you're doing that right, then everything else, all the little problems like you're having now, will go away - almost. Here are the basics. Watering This is the single most important part after you have selected an adapted grass type. All lawns will need water once a week when temps are above 90 degrees. When temps fall into the 80s, the lawn should go for 2 weeks between watering. When you water, water for that target time you found with the tuna cans. If it rains then reduce your watering so the total for the week is an inch. Mowing Mulch mow at the mower's highest setting for most grasses and at the lowest setting for bermuda. Fertilizing If you want to use chemical fertilizer, apply on Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving. If you want to continue to use organic like alfalfa pellets or Milorganite or whatever, apply on Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving. Apply organics at 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. For chemical fertilizers read the bag for directions. I have not used any chemical ferts since 2002. If you follow that advice on mature turf, which you don't have yet, then you should not have to deal with weeds or other problems. If you determine that you have bermuda, then find the Bermuda Bible online (Google). But I would not bother with that until you know what you have. Crazy hot summer. Bwahahaha. You mean compared to the freezing summers of the Bay Area? Come and visit me in Texas darlin' (not a real invitation).

do your neighbors have subsurface drip irrigation systems? Apparently, with SDI, if you do rototill in amendments, make sure to re-compact the soil nice and firm afterwards. If the soil is too loose and well draining, the SDI system might not work very well. Check out this link, about a third of the way down the page: http://www.jstryker.com/goofing/houselandscape/index.htm quote: "subsurface system on the lawn has been a disappointment. My lawn has had numerous dry spots that developed shortly after the sod was installed, and I have been unable to eliminate them by adjusting the water run times... I had used a similar product on commercial systems several years ago with success, so the problem is specific to my situation. It appears the problem is due to a combination of porous soil and insufficient soil compaction. The idea of the subsurface drip is that the water comes out of the emitters (holes) on the tubes and then it moves through the soil, by capillary action, up and sideways to wet the entire area. However the soil in my yard is very porous and was dug up to remove roots, so it was very loose. As previously noted we rototilled the soil to remix it and put a lot of organic amendments into it. After we aerated the soil we then compacted it to industry standards using a water-filled roller. We then installed the sod and compacted it again using the weighted roller. Unfortunately, while this is the normal procedure for installation of a new lawn, this apparently was not sufficient on our very porous soil to create enough contact between the soil particles to allow the water to move by capillary action.... ....the water is going straight down in the soil and only wetting the area directly below the tubes. I believe this is because the soil needs to be compacted a lot more firmly when using the subsurface system than occurs when using the standard weighted roller compaction method I used.... The lesson learned is that the subsurface drip system does not work well in porous, well-draining soils, and if it is to be used in a well drained soil it is important to over-compact the soil.... ....If your soil is less porous, then the subsurface drip system can work well. I have used it successfully on lawns in several locations, but in all those cases the soil was compacted using heavy tractor mounted compaction equipment."