Need Help With My Lawn

[Nancyboy]

Oops. I'm new here and I already messed up--I just put this on the Welcome, Tell Us About Yourself forum site instead of here. Well, here it is again:

Hi. I live in Washington State near the coast (Aberdeen). My husband has previously taken care of the lawn so I know practically nothing. He has been undergoing treatment for a nasty thyroid cancer since January so our lawn has not had much care. It has never been as green and lush as I would like so I just started looking into fertilizing and came across articles on overseeding as well. Our lawn background: we had crain flies a year or so ago on the front lawn so a landscaper did whatever to kill them and I think reseed some (although it looked like the birds got a lot of it) and possibly he aerated at that time too. I don't know what kind of grass seed he used at that time or what type of grass the initial sod was. Previous to that, we had a sprinkler system installed so when the installer had to cut a foot-wide trench across the lawn, he reseeded that area with a different kind of grass than what was on the lawn. I have no idea what any of our grass is and there may be 3 different kinds (all on the front). When the back lawn was originally seeded the man used some kind of gel granules that expanded when wet--they were supposed to hold moisture in which they did, but it created a gel goo that laid on the lawn for quite a while. The back lawn has a lot of brownish patches and the grass is really thin in some areas. Our back lawn gets sun from mid-morning until early afternoon and the front gets sun most of the day. (Actually, instead of Sun I should have said Light because it is often cloudy here in the N.W., even in the summer). I am in Zone 8, average in the 60's-70's in the summer (once in a while some hot 90's but not many) and average rainfall about 85". My biggest question right now is how can I find out what kinds of grass I have now and what kind of lawn seed to use to overseed that will "fit in" with what kind of grass I have? Would it help if I figure out a way to put pictures on this site? I would appreciate just some general thoughts, ideas, etc. to help me figure out where to look next. I figure this will be just a series of steps until I come up with a plan of things I could do to make our lawn better. I'm sorry if I've rambled on--I wasn't sure how much info. to include. Thanks for any advice.