Hello! Our yard is very uneven, bumpy, and covered in creeping charlie aka ground ivy. I read an article in a home handyman magazine with steps to fix a crummy yard but also wanted some advice from any other who have had this same problem. We will be doing this in the next few weeks. This is our plan: lay plastic over the sections we want to fix to kill the grass (we have two little dogs and a bunny who play in the yard so would like stay as chemical free as possible), remove as much as the dead grass/weeds as we can, till the soil, rake to level, replant a hearty thick grass which is supposed to help deter the creeping charlie re growth (also our neighbors have it also and we know it will comeback but this summer we were able to control it pretty well, we have a plan.) Besides the article we also have some friends who did this same thing to their yard and it turn out fantastic but they were able to use heavy equipment and we will be using a walk behind tiller. We live in Iowa and I know the harsh winters can cause a bumpy yard, and we don't expect it to be perfect what so ever! It would just be nice to have a full grassy yard and not twist any ankles when walking over it! Does anyone have any advice for us? Thank you!

I just did some work to my yard using equipment, but had the same problem with making it even and smooth. I tried a friends suggestion and it worked great. Drag a pallet with a cinder block of two ontop of it behind a riding mower or fourwheeler. It does a good job of knocking down the high spots, and pushes dirt into the low spots, worked great for me.

The way your planing on doing it will just till the weed seeds deeper into the soil and they will be back in the spring.
Right now most weeds are dorment so all you'll be doing is killing the top parts not the roots.
If you want to kill everything it would be best to kill it all with Round UP. Once it's all dead then add a 2" layer of fresh top soil and level that off and start fresh.
Any real landscaping company can do all this in one day with a power rake on a Bob Cat.

There are weed removal tools like weed machines available in the market using which you can take care of those overgrown weeds man.

any machines out there for spreading topsoil

nitros10 you need to go back and post you own question not add onto someone elses.