I'm documenting progress here. I bought the house in summer of 2014. At the time the only St Augustine was against the front wall by the faucet. This pic was taken Oct 24, 2016. At the time you can see where the green St Aug has spread into the horse herb and prairie grasses (i.e. weeds). I'll get another pic today.

Below is the view looking out from the front door.

I need to get a few more pieces of St Aug to speed up the spreading process. As with others landscaping has taken a back seat to remodeling.

May 2017 update. Note that we painted the house and removed the front shutters.

We had a very hard winter. I thought I might have lost the lawn altogether with two weekends at 14 degrees F. You can see some horse herb weed at the bottom of the picture just to the right of center. I'm surprised there wasn't more.

I did a complete reno in the fall of 2013 with Hogan's TTTF blend. Great folks to deal with and I have been very satisfied with their seed. Total front and back lawn is 20k square feet and too much to water properly during our hot, dry summers. It would cost $300 to $400 per month to keep it going so much cheaper to overseed each fall. Plus it seems each year I get a little more grass to make it through it's first year. Here's a photo of it at 1 year. This was fall of 2014:

This is my first year since the reno without a pre-m. Spring hit very early and I didn't have time to get it out but so far it's done fine. A little more clover than usual but thankfully no crabgrass. The rest of the neighborhood lawns consist of crabgrass, dallisgrass, common bermuda, various other weeds and maybe a sprinkle of fescue so keeping that stuff out of mine has been a chore.

Pic taken today 5/26/17. Had to use rotary due to seed heads but it still looks great.

Central IA, northern mix. Round-up holes are slowly filling in after I killed off grass weeds.

First spring after my full renovation last August with Turf Type Tall Fescue: Raptor III, Firecracker SLS and Titanium LS.

Not too bad considering that it was hit by 3 flood level washouts, grubs and miles, and disease in the late summer-mid fall.

Im starting to notice what looks like early stages of some sort of disease in a few areas. Can't tell from a distance, but up close you can tell something's going on. I think it's leaf spot from the fall that survived the winter.

You really need to get something on that asap. Don't let a gorgeous lawn like that get destroyed.

Yep. I've already hit it on Sunday with Bayer Advanced Fungus Control (ready-to-use bottle). I'll hit it again after the 14 day period expires. If it persists, I've got half a bag of Heritage G from last season that I'll throw in there.

Might want to put insect killer down, too. I had spots I thought were fungus but were actually insects eating roots.

I have already applied GrubEx1 on 4/15 to prepare for the grub season this summer. I think I've got the root feeders covered.

What type of insect was eating your roots?

June 2016 - digging trenches for my irrigation system. Dug by hand all by myself over the weekend.

August 2016 - about 2 months after hyrdoseeding with a kbg/ fescue blend. The brown in the bottom left is a bunch of dead crabgrass that I was able to wipe out with quiclorac.

June 2017 - taken today just after cutting. Still lots of work to do but quite happy with the progress so far.

^ nice work @ bmelz