Hello all,

I moved into a new home late last summer, however i neglected the lawn - (it wasnt all that great to begin with), but we had some dry weather and I only sporatically watered. Late last summer/early fall, I began to see alot of weeds come up.. I dutifully pulled them up.. but this spring, it looks like most of my lawn is dead.

I looked into a couple of lawn services, and both of them said they could come kill whatever is there and seed a new lawn. Alittle research shows that its alittle early/cool for proper germination of seeds - so that makes me question whether they really have my interest in mind.

Since my property is pretty small, I am considering going about it myself.

There are three main sections of my lawn - and represent their own challenges.

Section 1: this portion of the lawn probably had the best looking grass when I moved in - although i think it was probably recently seeded (maybe less than 1-2 yrs old) as I think the previous tenant took down a deck. The grass looks like its all dead and comes up easily when I am raking, no greenery except for a few weeds. There are also low areas that I would like to flatten. For what it is worth, this area tends to get alot of shade - and there are alot of roots underneath this area from the surrounding trees. What is the best way to go about attacking this area (I started to rake things up) - would raking the area, putting topsoil in the low areas, and spreading seed/watering suffice? or would I need to areate the area?

Section 2: This area had some grass, but by the late summer, it was probably 75% weeds. When I rake, the area everything comes up in clumps - there is a slight grade going away from the vantage point of the photo, and also has some low areas this section also goes around the house, that area has alot of moss, that also comes up easily when raked -

Section 3: Front yard - fairly shady, alot of moss, big oak tree in the front yard (for some reason, the grass grows great near the base of the tree, but in the surrounding area, it gets really mossy - there is also an area that appears to have been filled in at some point with low quality fill (sandy, some rocks) and nothing grew there except for alot of weeds - There is also a steep slope from the property down to the street - whats the best way to handle the slope? Will a lawn take hold there, or will it get washed away? (there is also some roots exposed and probably some erosion).

below are some pics - whats the best way to attack this? I m in no hurry - wouldnt mind attacking a section at a time if this is going to be a huge job. Should I just hire this out?