Our front yard
We've just finished a moderate project over the past few weeks. When we moved in, our front yard was 50% dirt, 40% weeds, and maybe 10% grass. A neighbor across the street and a friend in the community were planning on laying sod so we decided to do ours as well.
We started by renting a tiller and splitting the cost with the neighbor across the street. It took about 6 hours to till the front yard and I still missed several spots that I didn't go deep enough. The ground was very hard and dry which made the task pretty tiring. We then had 8 yards of 50% top soil and 50% compost delivered. They dumped it in the driveway and we spread it in the front yard until it was about an inch deep.