"Have been looking on the net for a good place for help...and I believe I have come to the right place." I think so. There are a lot of really helpful and friendly people here, and people who know about all kinds of different grasses and growing conditions. Do you know what kind of grass you (and your neighbors) have? I think cool season grasses such as Kentucky Bluegrass (KBG) and fescue may be most common there, but Kansas City may be warm enough for some warm season grasses. I would have thought cool season grass would be greener that what is in your pictures by now, so I wonder if warm season grasses are more common. Fescue will stay green with less water and than KBG, but KBG will spread to fill in bare spots, so you won't get that clumpy look. Some newer fescues will slowly fill in bare spots, but nothing like KBG. If the fescue in the lawn is older, it's probably K31, which has a wider blade and tends to get pretty clumpy unless it is overseeded frequently, but stays green with very little water. Most of the newer varieties of fescue have narrower blades, but either don't spread or don't spread as much as KBG. If you overseed in the spring, it's likely that a lot of the grass will die during the summer, unless you're planning to use a warm season grass. Some examples of warm season grasses are Bermuda, zoysia, St Augustine, buffalo grass, blue grama. The last two are native grasses that are often planted together. Depending on which kind of grass you plan to have, you may want to kill your existing lawn before seeding. If you want to have a fescue lawn or a mixed fescue and KBG lawn, you can probably just overseed the existing lawn in the fall. If you want an elite KBG lawn, you'll probably want to kill the existing lawn and overseed (or sod) in the fall. If you want a warm season grass, you should kill the existing lawn and either seed, sod or plug in April or May. Seed is the least expensive way to get a lawn, but also takes the most time. Sod is the fastest and most expensive. I've only seen plugs for warm season grasses. Basically, you put little plugs of grass in and it fills in the bare spots. More plugs will cause the lawn to fill in faster but be more expensive, fewer plugs will take longer to fill, but cost less. Plugs tend to be more expensive than seed, but less expensive than sod. They also tend to be faster than seed and slower than sod in terms of getting a full lawn. Here are the pictures "inline"

Honestly I would just mow it short and do nothing until the fall when you zap the whole yard with Roundup. Unless you are going to use KGB exclusively you're only talking 1-2 weeks MAX before you have a nice bed of green (to appease the wife). Much better results and much less work/$$$ than what you plan to do. Just live with a somewhat bad looking lawn for the spring/summer (honestly if you mow short all the bad spots will fill in with weeds and grass and not look horrible from a moderate distance). Think of all the extra time you'll have to do other home projects! That fence looks pretty awful. :) Since you don't have to worry about harming the grass why not power-wash and stain! When I first moved into my house (10 years ago now) my backyard was a beautiful green, dense, lush.....mess of clover and broadleaf weeds. When cut to 1.5" or so unless you were looking at the individual blades I constantly got praise for my "lawn". For years I tried this or that product not willing to go and Roundup it and start from scratch and a lot of time and money was wasted. I ended up successfully renovating it to fescue but it was a TON of work. In hindsight I should have either stuck with the weeds and mowed low, or completely started from scratch (my recommendation for you).

G'Day! For lawn info, i'd start by reading past postings at: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/lawns/ the lawn care forum. i noticed you list tractors as a favorite topic. Depending on what land you have besides the lawn, you may want to use a tractor-pulled mower, like we use for our pastures. If so, draw the edges of your garden beds and such to suit the curves your tractor and mower can fit. If not, with under an acre to cut, and flat at that, you really could do it with a reel mower - the old fasioned mowers you used to be able to hire a local teenager to do the lawn with for $10--. You'll probably end up with a power mower and an edger/weedeater/weedwhip. If you can, edge your flower beds and such with bricks laid side by side, not end to end; this will provide a wide enough margine you can mow right along and not worry about massacaring the "floppage" (overhanging part of plants.) You may also want to wrap the base of small trees with trunk tape before you accidently scar the bark. A ring of mulch provides a nice mowing-safety margin for trees too, but don't build a "volcano;" mulch should be only 1/2" next to the trunch base, thickening to 1" a foot away and 2" two foot away. Mulch too thick right be the trunck can rot the trunck bark above the root line (trunk and root barks are very different), and shelters wee critters than nibble bark in winter. 'Fraid i know nothing about caring for lawns exept to be sure to get the roots of any weeds. A lot of folk around here disapprove of chemlawn. All that stuff that gets sprayed goes in to the water table, and we who don't live in town pump it back up from our wells. Not so great for folk or our livestock. A perfect lawn is a very unnatural environment. Sure you don't want ot rip the whole thing up and make it all into garden? To each his own. You've got a couple month left to plan. Have fun! -vlad Here is a link that might be useful: GardenWeb Lawn Care Forum

Looks like mostly dead crab grass. So you can try a few things, others will chime in and give you more options/advice: Option 1 Add Pre-M now , enough strength to only last to July. You will have bare dirt spots this summer.On August 1st kill everything with roundup (normal strength not extended or "365" versions. Water it for a week every day after roundup to encourange more weeds to germinate, spray with round up again. After all dead scalp everything at lowest setting of mower multiple passes. getting as much matter up as possible, doesn't need to be 100%. Bag and remove everything. By August 15-20th (3-5 days after last round up and scalping) plant 100% Kentucky Bluegrass in the full sunlight area. Water 3x a day until germination 20 days later then twice a day at longer intervals until a couple of mower cuts (October ish), slowly weening to longer watering further apart. Option 2 Do everything above EXCEPT roundup culling, just add seed and water to bare spots (seeding) in mid/late August. Option 3 Don't want to live with dirt or grabgrass now? Plant Annual Rye in April and it will germinate and live until August, then you can do the above options. Don't want to do that? You can try Option 1 or 2 now, but recommend you buy, learn about and use Tenacity as a pre emergent when seeding (if using KBG or TTTF should be fine, but some grasses not compatible with seeding and Tenacity). It only gives you 30 days protection, and can be used at seeding, so you would have to reapply later. Its expensive but the bottle will last you a long time (small amounts needed). If you don't do this, you will have TONS of crabs grass competing with new seedlings. Also all summer you better keep that new grass moist in that full sun environment. Roots will be new. Spring seeding is tougher than optimal Fall timeframe I'm going to do it but only have an area of 500 square feet to keep weed free-ish while the grass grows.