Can I kill off my lawn?

[dripty]

Have inherited a very bad lawn. The previous owner not a gardener but then neither am I.
There seems to be more weeds than grass and a huge bald are in the centre which is all clay like and hard.
I am considering spraying the whole lawn with weed killer then over seeding with clover.
Will this work?

Personally I wouldn't do that - you could poison the soil for one thing - and won't the clover die off over winter leaving you with a really ugly brown patch?

You can either try to sort out yourself with a weed and feed type product and give the bald patch a good going over with a fork and try re-seeding it. There are patch repair products which could work for that.

Or, get someone like Green Thumb to come and have a look and give you a quote for sorting it out. If it's beyond redemption they'll surely tell you and you can decide what to do.

You could always rent a turf stripper from somewhere like HSS and remove the worst parts then re-turf. Or get someone else to do that. A turf stripper takes off the grass without removing huge amounts of the topsoil underneath.

If however you decide you don't want to get it fixed, then replace it with something like artificial grass or have it paved or gravelled.

If you use glysophate you will not poison the soil, as it works through leaves, slowly killing the plant, so you need the plants in full growth to kill them. Don't spray, uses watering can. It takes about 2-3 weeks to work and is unsightly

However, that clay patch in the middle isn't going to change on its own, so what *wowfudge suggested is better. How big is the lawn? - boggling slightly at the thought of a massive gravel patch.

I'm several weeks in to killing a mostly dead lawn, to re-plant with low native shrubs and dwarf fruit trees.

There's no indication of how big the OPs lawn is. I've replaced a small lawn with gravel myself in the past (the cost of the gravel was less than a lawn mower which I had nowhere to store at the time) but it was in a back yard type of garden. This was broken up with plants in containers, a path and a paved patio. The OP says she is no gardener and it's easier and cheaper than paving the area.

Thanks all.
The lawn is roughly 60 square metres and has a peculiar slope round the edge which will be a pain with a lawn mower.
TBH I quite like the idea of a mixture of decking, slabs and pebbles. But have looked into this and it would cost about £2000 just for the materials never mind labour.
So I have to work with what I already have which is a large patch of grass that has more weeds than lawn.

We will be reseeding our lawn this September. We have had 3 lawn specialist companies in now to quote and they have all said they will apply weed killer/ rotavate the lawn/ level it and then reseed. Good luck OP, I think it will be worth it in the end!
Ours is a 120ft garden!

Why don't you have half patio/seating area and half lawn as that's a very big lawn area to deal with?

Lolalotta, what level of quotes have you got if you don't mind me asking?

Depends how much money you want to spend on it.

Cheapest option is just to keep mowing it regularly. Could use a wees and feed as well. Most weeds won't survive mowing so eventually you will end up with just grass. Fork and reseed the bald patches.

You could rotavate and turf. Either hire a rotavater and buy and lay the turf yourself, or hire a landscaper to do it for you.

Most expensive would be to replace the lawn with hard surfacing.

WEED and feed!

Although urine is high in nitrogen so would probably help too!

Is there any way you could just make the awkward sloped bits into borders?

Problem with the borders is that the soil is very shallow. There seems to be a lot of rubble underneath so planting anything there is impossible.
Looks like a lot of weed and feed with seed.