Much of Ohio is in the glacial debree field. From your discription it sounds like your property is in it. As far down as you dig your going to find rock/stone and clay. The builder removed all soil when the lot was cleared for building.
How large is the area you want to have as lawn?

Thanks for the reply. The yard is rather small. The house sits on 1/4 acre lot.
Some suggestions I have heard here and there are to rent a bobcat and possibly a rock hound attachment for it. My thought is that most of the area is has growth on it so wouldnt I have to dig all the grass-weeds up and then try to rock hound?
The other suggestion was to just lay sod down over everything and be done with it.
another, was to bring top soil in and put 2-3" of top soil down and then either seed or put sod over that.

Ultimately I would like a yard that is fairly smooth so my kids can run and play and not twist their ankle. The yard had a rough grade on it when the builders left but it never had a final grade on it because the previous owners neglected it.

My situation is very simular to yours. My home was built in 2006. It is in the glacial degree zone. During the bulding process (it had been a wooded area) the builder removed all of the soil. Once building was done the material from excavationg was graded to up to even with the concrete (patio, sidewalks and drive). The builder then had the lot hydroseeded, which I'm told was mostly washed out into the street during a heavy rain. When I purchased it, the yard was a misture of grasses, weeds and gulley washouts, and bare spots (lots of bare spots). The soil was a mixture of stones mostly 1" or less and rock hard clay with numeous mailbox sized rocks interspersed at the surface. The lot is only a little over 1/3 of an acre.

I wont bore you with my long painful journey to what is now a pretty nice lawn of KBG and get to what I would have done in hind sight. (I started to detail my journey and the learning process I went thru--ending in complete renovation, and although humorous (if you find a person repeatedly walking into a door jam humorous)--it was also long and boring)

I'm probably going to take it up alongside the head from the experts here, but in hindsght, I would have pulled all of the large rocks out, leveled the lawn with sand and sodded. If you don't want to sod I'll be happy to try to answer any questions you may have about what I eventually found to work in our circumstance. Please update with what you end up doing and how it worked out.

Thanks for the follow up guys. I am not interested in doing a ton of back breaking work. I would also like to keep it tight on the pocket book too.
I am interested in your solution grass1950, I am curious about the sand. What kind was it and is there an advantage of using sane rather than top soil/ mixture? Did you have to dig up the existing grass/weeds before leveling with sand?

Thanks

We may have our wires crossed due to my post not being clear. I didn't sod, I seeded.

The sand I used was a washed clean medium coarse sand.

If you take my suggestion and go with sod, a half inch of sand/compost mix for a 5000 sq ft area will cost about $300 (should be enough to level the yard and cover the stone and clay). 5000sq ft of high quality KBG sod will cost about $950. Landscapers commonly charge double the cost of material for labor. So, for about $3000 you'll have a beautiful lawn and all you had to do is write a check. (get some estimates)

I ended up seeding myself and although cheaper than hiring someone to sod, it is a "back breaking' route. Not sure if this is what you want, but if you want to read it, here goes:

After 2 prior dismal attempts and a lot of fruitless trial and error, I decided I needed to get serious about the process and read everything I could find about yard renovation and started from scratch.
Mid August I sprayed the lawn with Ortho, then:

1. I waited until the last week of August.

2. I scalped the lawn, killing off what little was there.

3. I removed all of the large rocks and filled the holes with bags of top soil. I didn't do much about the smaller stones as that just didn't seem very feasable.

4. I watered heavily (to soften the ground up)and the next day I aerated with the goal of having the holes no more than 3-4" apart. (took about 4 hours)

5. In approximately equal parts, I mixed sand, (was looking for a clean washed medium sand and settled on mortar sand -- some places label it as play sand) sphagnum, and compost in a pull cart and hand spread it with a shovel. (it didn't take long to realize this was going to be a heck of a lot of work and material) Fortunately, I had started with the front lawn (about 3500 sq ft) and although my goal was to get at least an 1" cover down, it was probaly closer to 1/4". The backyard (about 4500 sq ft), I gave up on the sand and just used some compost and peat mix and put it on very thin (cost and my back were killing me by this time) Took 2 days to do.

6. I made a drag out of chain link fence and pulled it over and over until the hard clay pugs broke up pretty well and the yard looked pretty smooth. (most of a day to do)

7. Next day I sowed 50 lbs of KBG seed. (25# Midnite and 25# of a mix of 6 improved cultivars) Rented a spot seeder/verticutter/slit seeder (whatever people want to call it) and set it to cut about 1/4 in. deep. Went over the yard twice in two directions 45 degreees to one another. (started in the morning about 10 a.m. after picking up the slitter and finished at dusk)

8. Next day. Put down a starter fertilizer 15-24-10. covered the whole lawn with a thin dusting of very dry sphagnum. (I've never gotten dirtier--tricky stuff but really helped hold moisture during the watering process)

9. Used tripod sprinklers to water 3 times a day until yard was moist. Soon discovered it was a pain to keep moving the sprinlers so I bought six of the spike type and 300 foot of hose with turn off attachments and daisy chained to I could water in zones. (plus, wife was doing the noon watering and she had trouble moving and readjusting the tripod ones) Took almost 4 weeks of watering before most of the seed germinated. (water bill that month paid for most of the cost of the municipality's water system)

10.By the beginning of October, the front yard looked pretty good and the back yard was so-so but better than what it was.

Aerated the next spring and overseeded (3# of KBG impoved mix per 1k sq ft), did reseeding of the larger bare patches in back yard, ran the slitter over it again (bought one) in just one direction, and put down starter fertilizer. Aerated and overseeded with a pound of KBG per 1k sq ft again last fall. I left out some of the fertilization and other amendments I've done since the grass germinated that first fall. Most people would be happy with the back yard and the front yard looks very good.
BUT it cost over $1k in materials, rentals and water plus a week of vacation and a lot of back breaking work.

Although I can say "I did it myself" and that there is a lot of satisfaction in that, considering all the work and money, if I had it to do over, I would pay someone to level it with a clean medium sand/compost mix and lay KBG sod.

I'll try to post some pics if I can.

I'd be interested in knowing what you do and how it works out.

The reason you use sand instead of topsoil is that topsoil often comes to you with clods in it. You have to break every last clod up or you can never level the surface. Clods become the high point and leave hills and valleys in the surface. And if you have ever shoveled into a pile of sand and a pile of cloddy topsoil, you'll immediately appreciate the texture of the sand as it allows the shovel to penetrate easily. When the shovel stops abruptly at a clod, you entire body is jarred.

A bobcat is a very tricky vehicle to drive. I would not ever let even an experienced bobcat driver on my property. Tractors (big wheels in back and small in front) and the tools they have are a much better option. Any kind of dirt work should be done by pros.

The best sand will be faceted rather than rounded. That's hard to see but it is easy to tell once it is down. Beach sand is rounded. Your feet will always sink into it. Chipped sand comes from recently cut stones. The sand on the bottom of an aquarium are an example although they are huge compared to the sand you're looking for.

Is your lot 2-3 inches below grade right now? You mentioned wash outs. That's a lot of sand/soil to bring in. When I bought my house the level of the soil was 6-7 inches below the level of the concrete due to torrential rains and soil wash outs. There were roots everywhere and no grass. The former owner neglected it for 20 years or more.

dchall makes good points. Especially about the sand surface-- I don't think sugar sand would make a good base for seeding or sod for the reason dchall points out.

I used sand for a number of reasons. As my soil was rock and clay, I chose sand to help drainage. I also wanted sand in the plug holes to keep them open for both drainage and to give the grass something to root into. Sand is much easier to level and handle than topsoil. Originally I intended to do a 70-80% sand mix with the other 20-30% equal parts compost and sphagnum, but I got worried about fertilisty and got carried away--probably unnecessarily. Plus, After the neighbor put in screened topsoil around his new patio I noticed a lot of settlement which concerned me AND everything I read on the university turf sites said that any topdressing should be a coarser material than the soil underneath. Sand just seemed like the logical choice and from the results, the right one.