Houzz is having difficulty with photos, and yours haven’t uploaded.

They should post just fine in the comments below.

No landscape fabric in any bed with plants. It interferes with movement of nutrients, air and water into the soil.

Maybe someone from the Garden Forum will chime in on the "how-to's." If you want design advice, be sure to upload photos that show the area you're talking about .... from enough distance away that people can understand the context.

First 2 pictures are backyard, 2nd is the the side of the house and the last is the front of the house. Not sure why pictures are not posting well. Let me know if you cannot see the pictures well.

"my wife said we should do this, this should not be hard." For her, of course, it will not be hard. You'll be doing all the work and she will be merely approving or disapproving.

For design assistance, you'll need to provide pictures that show an entire scene, not just a piece of it. For example, at the front of your house, stand at the city sidewalk and in line with the front door. Take a series of slightly overlapping photos that pan from the left lot line to the right lot lines so we can see all the way across the front of house and some space at each end. Don't substitute a computer generated panorama as it will be too small and distorted. Keep the camera at the same location for all shots so they can be reconnected. You'll merely pivot to take the pictures.

I would caution you against creating planting beds along the walk. Instead of making your entrance more welcoming, they will make it the opposite. The taller the plants along it, the more off-limits it will seem.

At the side of the house, you'll need to create a bed for those two plants, as opposed to having them be individually surrounded by lawn.

Consider having groundcover fill in whatever "leftover" blank space is in the bed so that no mulch shows when things are grown together. This means not only the end to annual mulch replenishment, but means that you get to look at soft green plants instead of dry, hard mulch.

Creating new planting beds is relatively simple although can require a bit of work. You do need to remove the grass/lawn (and ALL weeds) but how you do so depends on how much $, effort or time you have to devote. The fastest and most expensive is to rent a sod cutter - easy-peasy, over and done!! But maybe best for only large areas due to the expense. You can also remove the sod by hand with a sharp, straight edged shovel or garden spade. Hard work but very doable. The easiest method is to just smother the area with a layer of dampened cardboard or newspapers and a quantity of mulch but if you do so now it will not be ready to plant until next spring.

No tilling required (or suggested). No landscape fabric. Just plant in the indigenous soil using whatever amendments you like or think appropriate as a mulch or top dressing. If planting and mulching this fall, just rake any mulch aside before adding new plants next spring, then rake the mulch back.

Yes this is something you can do. Since you are a novice I think you should focus on just one area. That will give you experience to help you decide if you want to continue to the other areas. It is not a difficult task if you are fit and not afraid of hard work.

You must have some idea of how you want the front of the house to look. Can you tell us your plan?

I've noticed a fad lately of over planted beds. To me that is not attractive and as plants mature some will require removal.

More pictures of the front please.

I would not rent a sod cutter for the bed in the front. I've done something like this

If you have Bermuda grass you will need to kill it before you continue.

Emmerene, here is the post on the front beds:

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5437425/weigelas-dappled-willow-forsythia-the-right-plants-for-me

Thank you Babs.

"Landscape fabric is the devil's loincloth." Best description yet. hahahaha!

So here are the follow up questions-

Backyard: See attached pictures. The mulch bed will be from front to back about 30' X 5'.... with 2' X 2' will be about 40 strips to cut, will take a few days to do it I suppose. Then the back strip of 5' X 90' has no grass, but weed growing today. I have someone coming with backhoe to scrape and grade that strip and prepare it for grass- since that strip there is no grass, so after scraping I will not have to do anything there to extend this mulch bed, correct? By the way I bought this yesterday (Edger)

Front of the house: Look at the original picture all the way to the top. I have removed junipers from here 2 months ago and since then done nothing there. There is mulch from last year there still. It looks compacted- so I need to till this area or do I dig holes and plant straight and mulch on top without adding any soil etc?

I think more reasonable bed lines would look like this. (You would never be able to install or maintain pointy, wedge shape areas.)

If you already have a guy coming with a backhoe, why don't you have him do the sod removal?

A backhoe is not the machine. A bobcat with a skilled operator could do it.

Given what the backhoe is coming to do, the operator had better be able to strip sod with it. Otherwise, a bobcat is what should be coming anyway.

I'm just very confused at the idea that equipment is coming to do I'm not entirely sure what, but isn't going to do the rest of the job while it is on site.

The backyard looks like they're stripping a big open area, so the backhoe is great. In the areas where the machine is going to have to cross lawn area that remains, the backhoe is the wrong tool for the job. It can strip the sod, sure, but a heavy piece of equipment with knobby ag tires will chew up the turf and create a lot of damage that needs repaired. Our clients are surprised at how infrequently we use bobcats, etc but the reality is you can spend a full crew day doing the work by hand and leave with a check and a happy customer, or you can spend half a day using a machine and THEN spend a full crew day (plus soil, plus sod) cleaning up the mess you made and trying to placate someone still reeling from the collateral damage.

Odd because the one time I hired out serious garden work, what arrived to dig a bed was a small Ford tractor with a backhoe attachment. It didn't do any more damage to the lawn than the old John Deere I used to mow. It may have weighed less ;-) Since these areas aren't that big, I'd expect something similar to arrive.

What do you have planned for the large area of dead grass?

@mad_gallica we may be talking about two totally different things then! We used to have a little 35 hp Ford tractor with turf tires that could absolutely go just about anywhere. When I hear backhoe this is what I picture :)

I just called the guy and asked what he is going to bring. the guy is coming with a tractor and box scraper of 6’ 6” (I thought this is same as a backhoe) and a loader to load excess dirt after he scrapes the area. I am wanting to start grass there this Fall. Currently the area is overgrown with weeds of all sizes and shapes. Plus it has stumps from land clearing that was done here last year. The guy said he can scrape off some of the smaller stumps. He said he can scrape of dead grass off (most of it- rest I can remove with a shovel).

does this plan make sense? I will post picture and start another discussion- I would like to get advice on whether i need to use glyphosate this weekend, about 10 days before the guy comes to scrape. Or just scraping will remove weed and if I can put down grass seed right after.

A skid-steer loader with teeth -- what I called a "Bobcat" -- with an experienced operator could do a good job of scraping off sod. I would do the glyphosate because it will kill SOME of the perennial roots that will be below the top surface. If not killed they will return quickly. Some will not die anyway with just one spraying.