Melvee, that's almost certainly not crabgrass that you're seeing dried up and brownish - you shouldn't be able to find crabgrass this time of year, even in VA. The first frosts are a full kill. That's either an unimproved tall fescue or nutsedge (guys help me - does Nutsedge go "dormant" in VA?) As far as your KBG question, I have to laugh (sorry!). There are many of us on this forum that have spent tens of thousands of dollars over years just **trying** to get KBG to take over the whole lawn. KBG is actually gorgeous, but it sure likes its water and nitrogen (fertilizer). The serious answer is that you are in an area that is considered "transitional" and you have to be very careful about the variety that you use - many KBG's don't like the prolonged heat and humidity that you get. As far as staying green is concerned, even up here in New York my KBG lawn popped out from under 55 straight days of snow cover this week and was still pretty green. Of course, I could still face yet more snow cover this winter. The best advice that I can offer is to chat with neighbors that have nice lawns that you'd like to have and ask them the varieties of grass that they use and whether they take care of it themselves. Avoid the "lawn crazies" and forget their perfect lawns unless you want to be one. That is a way of life, not a lawn ;-) C'mon back here when you have an idea of what you'd like to put down on your lawn, and see if you can't get one of the nicer people to identify a few of the major weeds and grass types that you have (there is nobody that won't help an expectant mom that asks for help!!) Or, post a few (close-up) pictures of both the grass and some of the major weeds.

The only way to completely convert from one kind of grass to another is to kill and start over. I tired to overseed a KBG/tall fescue lawn with native grasses, figuring that over time, the KBG and tall fescue would die because they need so much more care than the natives. I had to overseed a number of times and, although the lawn now has native grass throughout, it still has a fair amount of KBG and tall fescue. If that's the case with grasses that have such differing needs in a desert environment, I doubt if you could succeed with grasses that have similar needs. You could probably favor the tall fescue by fertilizing and watering more, since fine fescue needs less of both, but since tall fescue doesn't spread much, you'll probably need to overseed regularly. And even then, you're likely to end up with the tall fescue dominating, not completely replacing the fine fescue.

I don't know what part of the country you live in. Fine fescues do not withstand heavy traffic. Mowing height is important if you are limited to only 4 hours per day of full sun. The recommended mowing height would be no lower than 3 inches as the longer the blade, the larger the leaf surface is that captures sunlight this will help the lawn do better. Watch the watering too much is not good. If you want a fine bladed lawn you can plant the fine bladed sod and later you can over seed with kentucky blue grass to help the lawn self mend, but you will have to wait 3 months before seeding as the sod grower used a post emergence weed control that will prevent seedlings from germinating. If later you do not like the fine bladed lawn you can overseed with the wider bladed fescue. There is a fescue you may want to look into, grown by pacific sod in california called medallion extreme.

Every lawn in my neighborhood has gone brown. There are products that kill nutgrass growing in the lawn, Here is a link that might be useful: death to nutgrass