Just a bit of backstory... summer of 2020 in Southwest PA we had a pretty harsh heat wave combined with a ~month long drought - it toasted the lawn. I also learned a valuable lesson that you can certainly over water. This left loads of new weeds feasting on the bare dirt patches and K31, which like a cockroach, could very possibly be immune to a nuclear holocaust. After much research on the forum, I made the decision to fully renovate in the fall of 2021. I made a couple mistakes along the way that I'll share also (along with the reason I'm even creating this post to figure out what is happening).
The first week of August I began Round Up applications. I didn't tell my wife about this beforehand thinking that she couldn't say no after it was applied. Mistake #1
The whole month of August was spent watching the lawn turn brown (what was left of it) and reapplying where needed to ensure I started with a blank slate*. Keep note of the blank slate for later on... oops. I had multiple rain falls during the month which was great to force weeds to the surface and any surviving grass, etc. I live on a fairly busy intersection (entrance to the neighborhood and across from a CC). There's pro's and con's to this... you get to show off your work (which could be the best part if your lawn is on point), but you have to answer every question to every neighbor in the entire neighbor, and also be embarrassed if your lawn/house are not in ideal shape.
After everything was sufficiently dead and Labor Day approached (kick off weekend), I did one last scalping/scraping pass. I then had around 28T of dirt brought in so I could focus on leveling and create a good base.
