question about mulch and lawn

[b]I was looking at your pages on raised beds using logs.

This summer, Hurricane Ike killed a huge ash tree in my yard that covered the entire front yard. After the stump grinder got done with the trunk and the roots, I was left with about half the yard filled with course mulch. My question is: rather than remove this mulch, could I lay an inch or so on top of the mulch and then lay down my grass squares?

By the way, I laughed out loud at the farrowing hut

by grass squares you mean sod right? is it zoysia or fescue? (the only kinds of seen come in squares instead of rolls around here) how deep is the chipped wood? I would suspect that your major problem would be that it would drain so well that the sod may not be able to stay moist enough to shoot roots down and settle. my husband owned a sod installation company for a while and I remember him always saying the biggest killer was when people wouldn't water it enough at first (out of his hands often at that point). maybe it would be better to pile it up and compost it then use it.

Well .... yeah, you could do that. 

And there are some complications, but they are minor. 

You will definitely need to add some organic lawn fertilizer for a while.  Otherwise your grass will kinda yellow. 

The thing is that the wood chips will steal a lot of food from the grass - for the first few years.  And then in later years it will break down enough that it will give it all back, and then some. 

So this will be a really good thing for you, but just add a little organic fertilizer for the first few years.

The wood chips will in fact use a large quantity of nitrogen in the soil to break down and will in return keep that nitrogen from the grass.

Mulched beds create this issue all the time and is a very common problem for plant health in landscaped beds.

Then I will add that those wood chips will not allow proper root growth for the sod to establish which is the most important aspect of laying sod......good soil contact for root growth. That is one of the reasons why sodded lawns are rolled after it is layed.