I just did that in the last weekend on my 1/4 acre lawn. I used a
landscape rake to spread top soil on the lawn. The landscape rake is
4-ft wide. This makes the job go faster than using a small rake. Still
this took me two days to finish my small 1/4 acre lawn (around 12
hours totally spent across two days -- 4 hours on Saturday and 8 hours
on Sunday).

Hiring day labors to do this probably is a better idea than trying to
do this yourself in a large 1/2 acre lawn -- I just cannot see how I
can do this by myself in a 1/2 acre lawn even though I am heathy and
do exercise every day.

I would like to use composts. But I could not find any place locally
that sell composts in bulk. That was the reason why I use top soil
instead. But after seeing the top soil that they sell in bulk, I have
a feeling that I might be better off buying top soil or composts in
bags. The top soil that they deliveried in bulk doesn't look that
great -- I should have refused the delivery; but I could not tell the
difference when the top soil is wet. Hope you have a better luck
buying the good stuff.

Jay Chan