Want to get rid of 'lawn' area - How?

[MeIAm]

Hi,

Before I start I feel I need to say that I am a complete novice and I'm sorry if I'm asking a really stupid question but ....
My garden hasn't been touched for at least 3 years since we've been here bar using the lawn mower on it twice a year just because I feel I should (house was very run down and garden was last thing on our minds) and according to the neighbours went untouched for at least 6 years previous to us (elderly lady). The garden is a mess! We've never used it! I want that to change in time for next summer.

My problem is that the 'lawn' area (very small garden) is uneven (dips in lots of places) and so overgrown that it is now just weeds - there is no visible grass. My idea is to spend the winter getting it completely bare and starting again so it's my garden, not something I close the blinds on ask I can't see it. How can I get it back to just soil? Can I cover the whole lot with that black weed fabric or cardboard or plastic sheeting? All of them? I don't want to use weed killer because of neighbours cats.

Yes, just cover the lot with a tarp over winter and it should kill your average weed.

We had to do this when we moved into our house last year as previous owners had neglected the garden and the lawn was just a whole lump of uneven weeds and yellow thick grass. We hired a lawn cutter from HSS Hire as it was a biggish area, ripped up the lawn and then covered the whole area in weed membrane. We decided actually to do half in gravel and the rest beds and new lawn and it worked a treat. Bit of a faff but worth it!

I'll add the reason we ripped the lawn up was because it was so uneven and such poor conditon it was just a million times easier to just rip up and start again. Also our garden was awkward with fruit trees in the middle of the lawn too so again far easier just to strip it all out and start again.

I've done this on a huge uneven hilly area. I used Gallop 360, waited a couple of weeks then used a scarifyer to rake up most of the dead grass. I then did another kill of the new weeds with gallop 360 ( got from Amazon) and scarifyed again. I was too lazy to dig the whole area up afterwards all at once so just dug when I wanted to plant