Long time reader, first time poster. I am currently in the process of renovating 6,500 sqft in SE WI to a 100% KBG blend of Bewitched, Bluebank, and Bluenote. The plan is for the entire lawn to be reel mowed. This renovation has been in the plans for over a year and my wife and I have spent pretty much most of our free time since April preparing or completing projects outside which is why it's taken me so long to get everything written down. I plan over the next few days to get caught up with the current situation of the reno but in the meantime I will share and cover everything we did over the course of this season. I hope this can bring at least some value for anyone considering a renovation next year or in the future and learn as I have from the many other members and journals on here. Thanks for reading!
We bought and moved into our new home in April of 2020. Included with the home was a seeded lawn of contractor grade NoMix. With COVID impacting many things at this time, I knew this was going to be temporary. The most important thing for us was not to have a mud yard as we needed a full lawn for our two Great Danes. Over the course of the spring and summer our NoMix came in pretty well and at this time I was maintaining approximately 8,500 sqft of turf.
Knowing that a full renovation was planned for Fall 2021, I still needed to maintain a halfway decent lawn for a little more than a year. I made the decision to bring in addition topsoil (15 yards) in August 2020 and proceeded to spot level areas and overseed with SeedSuperStore's SS1100 KBG blend and SS9000 Rye blends to help fill in the bare and thin spots. This was a great opportunity to try a few things out as well as start procuring equipment and experiment. If I learned one thing, while spring/summer renovations are possible, it was difficult and needed more attention than fall. Overall, by the end of October of 2020, we had one of the better lawns in our neighborhood.
Proceeded to spend the rest of the fall and winter months getting ready for our upcoming projects and planning the fall renovation. If all went according to plan the timeline was going to be:
April- garden bed
May- adding additional plantings, buried downspouts, deck project, define new beds/concrete curbing
June- irrigation install, glyphosate lawn mid June
July- add additional topsoil, level, fallow, target seed down July 31st
Aug-Nov - grow in
We bought and moved into our new home in April of 2020. Included with the home was a seeded lawn of contractor grade NoMix. With COVID impacting many things at this time, I knew this was going to be temporary. The most important thing for us was not to have a mud yard as we needed a full lawn for our two Great Danes. Over the course of the spring and summer our NoMix came in pretty well and at this time I was maintaining approximately 8,500 sqft of turf.


Knowing that a full renovation was planned for Fall 2021, I still needed to maintain a halfway decent lawn for a little more than a year. I made the decision to bring in addition topsoil (15 yards) in August 2020 and proceeded to spot level areas and overseed with SeedSuperStore's SS1100 KBG blend and SS9000 Rye blends to help fill in the bare and thin spots. This was a great opportunity to try a few things out as well as start procuring equipment and experiment. If I learned one thing, while spring/summer renovations are possible, it was difficult and needed more attention than fall. Overall, by the end of October of 2020, we had one of the better lawns in our neighborhood.


Proceeded to spend the rest of the fall and winter months getting ready for our upcoming projects and planning the fall renovation. If all went according to plan the timeline was going to be:
April- garden bed
May- adding additional plantings, buried downspouts, deck project, define new beds/concrete curbing
June- irrigation install, glyphosate lawn mid June
July- add additional topsoil, level, fallow, target seed down July 31st
Aug-Nov - grow in