How to get a small back yard back to normal?

We live in a townhome with a small, say, 8 x 8 patch of land for our back yard. My wife has tried several different "looks" for that spot o' land over the seven years we have lived here. Over the past several months, it has, basically, been ignored, and has grown into an unkempt tangle of brown weeds. To further exasperate the situation, we recently adopted a puppuy, and have been allowing her to go outside, there, and mostly urinate. I would like to get that area in order before the winter is fully upon us, but something in the back of my mind (and the pit of my stomach) is keeping me from touching all that, pardon my slightly graphic verbage, pee-stained gr. What would be the bestway to, maybe, "pre-treat" all that overgrowth beforehand. Should I just run a sprinkler over the area for several hours? Should I apply some sort of Killz-like solution to raze the growth? Should I get one of those blow-torch thingies people sometimes use to get at weeds in the cracks of their driveways and sidwalks? What my wife would ultimately like to do afterwards is get the ground completely back to just dirt, and do some sort of tile / brick / paver treatment to it. How should I proceed once I’ve been able to trim back the overgrowth. At that point, there will just be a bunch of stubbly weeds stumps sticking out of the ground. Again, do I pour some sort of solution to get the weeds to die? Do I ‘roto-till’ it? Sorry for asking so many questions, but I am such a total newb when it comes to this whole aspect of life. I am trying to do it on the hush-hush and trying to surprise my wife by doing it myself. I know she will appreciate the consideration. Any help you could provide would be severely appreciated. Thank you.