Loving our new grass!

This weekend, we finally finished up our most recent giant undertaking, completely re-sodding our front yard!  It has been a lot of work, but I really think the end result is beautiful. Yesterday, when I came home from the grocery store, I literally said out loud, "OMG, it looks so good! Eeek!" because Kevin had finished it up while I was out.

When we bought this house, we started out with a mixture of grass and weeds. The lawn didn't look that bad and it was green, but when you walked around on it, you would find about 5 different types of grass and it was being taken over by weeds.  Also, since some of the grasses were different types, in the winter, we had a splotchy green and brown mess... we decided that the best solution was to kill everything and start over.

So, here are some pictures of the grass now, it looks a million times better than it did only a few of weeks ago. We're so glad that it turned out well.

Here's the process that we followed, for anyone interested.

Our original grass/weeds

1. Kill all grass and weeds with regular Round-up (i.e. not the long lasting stuff) by spraying multiple times, wait a couple of weeks for everything to die. If you have any bermuda or extra crazy weeds, it will take multiple applications, with time in between, to get rid of everything.

Killing our grass (left) and our neighbor's grass (right)

Waiting for all of the grass to go brown

2. Mow the weeds and grass on the lowest lawn mower setting to almost scrape the dirt and get rid of a lot of the weeds and grass.
3. Till the ground to 3-6" depth with a tiller (you can rent one for a couple hours to a day for pretty cheap)
4. Rake out and remove all of the loose debris in the dirt.  Add topsoil or a mix of compost and soil to the dirt and mix with the existing dirt.

Our yard after tilling, raking and adding more soil

5. Add a starter fertilizer and lime to the soil before installing sod.
6. Lay the sod. Make sure to stagger pieces like bricks and place small pieces between others instead of at edges where they can dry out.

Laying the sod

Sod on the pallets

Sod finally down in the front yard!

7. Water 3 times a day for 3 weeks, then go to a more normal watering schedule.

Watering the grass after installation

8. Enjoy the fruits of your hard work and lush grass!