"Yard work" is not a figure of speech

Here's an update on the latest project - the yard.  At first glance, it seems pretty nice, as you can see from these pictures (taken last year while we were still house-hunting):

(side yard - south of the house - facing east towards Lake Michigan)

(side/back yard at the garage - facing east)

Upon closer inspection, however, there are several areas where the grass is struggling to grow, and it's rife with weeds of all sorts.  Dandelions, clover, and annual bluegrass (not Kentucky bluegrass) are the most common, but there are several others I haven't identified yet.  There are even a couple of patches of ground-covering moss in shady areas, which I hope may be attributable to a lack of enough nitrogen in the soil.

The western and southern edges are also quite bare, save for a variety of odd weeds.  This could be due to a combination of the trees and shade cover  - and fallen leaves that the previous owners never removed, but seem to have just blown/raked into long strips, leaving them to cover the ground and decay.

Those are the main problems.  Now for the 'solutions.'

1) I placed some weed killer on the tallest weeds, but (he said, hanging his head in shame) in my haste I used weed and grass killer.  Naturally, after a couple of days, we ended up with a back yard dotted with small brown patches of dying vegetation.  To make matters worse, some of these started a chain reaction in the surrounding grass and started spreading.  Now, instead of a few small brown patches, we had large brown patches...  (Now I just pull the tall weeds up by hand.)

(Don't let this happen to you...)

2) After about a week, I took a stiff-tined garden/dethatching rake and went over all the dead grass to expose the soil, as you can see in the picture above.  I also took the rake along the fence edges where it was already quite bare, and exposed that soil as well.

(grass struggles at the south side fence)

(and on the west front fence too)

After the soil had been exposed and watered, the grass cut short and the clippings removed, I spread fertilizer and seed throughout.  (The short grass lets the fertilizer and seed reach the soil, and the wet soil holds onto them better.)

(my new spreader - ain't she a beaut?)

With daily watering for a while,  hopefully the grass will start to flourish.  I'm 'overseeding' to help the grass choke out the weeds, and will go back to cutting the grass high.  Apparently grass cutting is 'traumatic' for the plant and weakens it, so from now I'll be keeping the grass at least 3 inches high and cutting off no more than the top 1/3rd.

3) I've also removed the sod and replaced the soil in a few of the brown areas, covering it with a combination mulch/grass/fertilizer 'patch'.  

We'll see which areas grow the fastest, and hopefully we'll have a nice green yard - at least before the end of the summer.......