I have a fairly large front and back garden ~ 250metres sq. I got a gardener in to relay the lawn as the existing lawn is in a terrible state due to building work that we'd had done last year. The soil is quite poor quality too, sandy in some places. Being a new build I've found bricks, bits of glass and other odds and ends after having dug down a few inches.

The gardener seemed to have a good rating from the ratedpeople website so I got him to start work. To cut a long story short I had to sack him before he completed the job due to poor planning on his part.

As things stand at present I still have a lawn in a poor state plus a couple of tons of soil and a ton of sand left over from the uncompleted job sitting on my front lawn.

I don't have much time at the weekends to work on the garden myself as I've got two small kids which was the whole reason for getting someone in who could sort it all out for me.

Having been bitten once, I'm now contemplating doing it myself over a long period of time but wanted to get a feel for how difficult the job might be.

Most turflaying advice seems to indicate that I'd need to

1. Possibly use a turf cutter to take of the top layer of turf.

2. Rotorvate my soil to various depths (15cm?). I'm worried if I do this though that I'll bring all the rubbish lying just below the surface to the top which will mean extra work.

3. Flatten the surface down and spread a few inches of soil + sand.

4. Lay turf on top.

I've had a few quotes to do the job at around 2k which is a lot of money to me (seeing as we're all living in the credit crunch). I've been told it could be done in about 3 days.

Any advice would be useful.

cheers.