Starting with your drainage, if you had someone do the finish grading, then the soil level is done. You don't need to add any topsoil. Anything you add now will ruin the existing drainage...which was set by a professional drainage guy. Why would you want to mess that up?

Is something wrong with your gutter drainage? All this is brand new and already you want to "fix" it. I don't understand. It seems like you're spending money just spend it. If you are worried you won't be spending enough, then get started with organic gardening. I'm not saying it is necessarily more expensive, but it can be. Why? Because you cannot overapply organic fertilizer. The more you use the better everything looks. With chemical ferts, there is a limit and beyond that you will kill the plants. So I'm saying that organic allows you to spend money. You don't need to, though. Having said that, there is a way to kill your grass with organics. All you have to do is apply too much compost, or worse, manure, to your lawn. One of my neighbors did that last weekend. Now the neighborhood stinks and her lawn will be dead for a couple years. But I digress...

If you have sandy soil, just thank your lucky stars and put in a garden. Topsoil is highly over rated in my opinion. My lot was washed out from 4 to 6 inches deep when we got the house. We used topsoil for most of it and sand in the back. The only place with really great grass is the sandy part in back. You can see a distinct line where the sand stops and the native topsoil begins. The sandy part is deep green and the topsoil part is yellow. Why is that? Our native topsoil is mostly crushed limestone with a pH of 8. Sand is crushed quartz and granite with a pH of 7. Then again, your sand may have other minerals in it. You might want to get a soil test. But the point is, don't bring in topsoil just to bring in topsoil. All the grading has been done by people who know what they are doing. Adding topsoil, even 1/4-inch every year, is one of the worst ideas in lawn care. If you have a golf course with no buildings, curbing, or concrete, then fine. But for the average home owner, it leads to a big mess as time goes by. I have pictures of lawns where the owner added far too much topsoil. I'll post one at the end of my rant.

As for grass: You missed a great opportunity to install your lawn last fall. Had you done it then your grass would have sturdy roots by now that will be able to resist the summer heat when it comes in June and July. You would also have a relatively weed free lawn because the main annual lawn weed, crabgrass, dies out in the fall leaving your grass time to thicken up to keep it out. Now you are doomed to spring lawn he!!. If you seed a new lawn in the spring, all the crabgrass seed will be sprouting along with the grass. Crabgrass sprouts fast and grows fast. Since it is an annual plant, its roots harden fast and furious. It will easily take over when your newly planted target grass weakens and thins. The only easy way around that is to use sod to start an instant lawn. Sod is already thick and dense and has hardened roots. However, sod is expensive. I suggest you save all the money you were going to spend for grading and topsoil and spend that money on sod instead of seed.

Which sod/seed? I'll leave that up to my Yankee friends. A lot of people in the nawth use a blend of Kentucky bluegrass and turf type tall fescue (TTTF). The KBG will spread and thicken to fill in and become very dense. It will also become dormant and turn brown in the winter. The fescue will be green all year (only redeeming feature in my opinion). Fescue is a thin turf unless and until you get enough seed on the ground. The usually requires reseeding every fall until you get it right. KBG spreads without reseeding and makes a very nice lawn.

Here is a friend of mine's KBG lawn in Southern California (very near the Pacific). He fertilizes with used coffee grounds from Starbucks once or twice a year. From the satellite view of his neighborhood, he clearly has the nicest lawn in the area.

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There are many different varieties of KBG and fescue. That is what I'll leave up to the others. They will ultimately send you to NTEP to get information for grass performance in your particular area.

Don't install the sprinklers until the garden and lawn is in. All kinds of design changes can come about between now and then which would ruin your preestablished ideas about watering. As for the actual installation, there is a much better forum here at GW for sprinklers. Go there, not here, for sprinkler advice.

Too much topsoil. I have other pictures of this same neighborhood showing that the original soil level was at or below the concrete sidewalks.
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Thanks for the follow up Dchall. I probably wasn't very clear, but my intent was to move the existing top 2-3 inches to the back yard when I could add it to the existing grade without creating something like the picture you attached above. The intent was to have grass at the same level as the sidewalk, basically a normal lawn.

However, you make an interesting point. Why not just add sod? I called a local sod farm and I can get sod for about $1500 (10,000 square feet). Which is probably close to the same cost for dirt, grass seed, and equipment rental. Plus, it's not a complete pain in the butt, aside from a hard days work laying the sod. And I'll have pretty much an instant lawn in 2-3 weeks. What's not to like?

I've ordered an inexpensive soil PH test kit, just to make sure that the soil is ok.

Thanks very much! Sometimes it's good to have someone look over a complicated plan and point out something obvious that I might have missed which would be much, much simpler...

Mitchulskus

You'd be surprised how many people come here after doing expensive and unneeded work and then ask for advice.

"I've ordered an inexpensive soil PH test kit, just to make sure that the soil is ok. "

Do yourself a favor, send a soil sample to a reputable lab (Logan Labs in Ohio is excellent). For $20 you can get an accurate measurement of pH, as well as an analysis of your soil that is a million times better than any do it yourself kit. Do it yourself kits can be inaccurate and you can get a misrepresentation if you hit a patch of anomalous soil.

One problem with the DIY pH kits is your water pH might be off thus throwing off the results.

Attached is a copy of the new sod after the installation last April. Lawn is doing great a year later. Thanks again for your advice dchall!