So I ended up doing the application tonight. We've had almost no rain and there is none in the forecast for the next week and it's the perfect time of year for this application. I stripped down to my shorts and wore flip-flops, put on some gloves and wore a dust-mask. I figure the main danger (even though non-toxic supposedly) is inhalation but other than that I wanted to be able to hose off and contaminate the least amount of clothing (I have a wife and 2 kids, one is a 2-month old). I wear glasses but didn't put on sealed goggles, so made sure to stay upwind at all times. Again probably overkill but better safe.... Grabbed an old plastic teaspoon measuring spoon and a 3 1/2ft section of gutter to use as a guide. I put the teaspoons of powder evenly spaced out with the guide and then hand-watered the lawn focusing on the white spots until they were gone. You get a bit of loss when the water first hits the spots and it goes into the air but I'm assuming it's a very small percentage. All in all it was an easy but somewhat tedious job. I had read a lot of bad things about the overpriced and junk applicator so the hand method was definitely more back-breaking and time-consuming. But it was free and worked well. Thanks for everyone's help and hopefully I can report back next season and find some milky grubs underneath the soil.

Hi BigDogLover, I'll be sure to get a picture to you at some point when it's done. I'm really excited for how well it'll turn out (Lord willing). The whole thing about pine being soft is an over-generalization. What I've been told is that while we take all species of wood (and there are tons - to name a few of the most popular: white oak, red oak, walnut, ash, beech, maple, cypress, white pine, yellow pine, alder, elm, cherry, hickory, birch, teak, mahogany, cedar, ETC.) and split all those many species into only two categories - hardwoods and softwoods - that it's not nearly so black-and-white; that is to say, there is a much more gradient scale between hard and soft. There are several different species of pine out there, some of which are quite hard -- and southern yellow pine (often referred to as just "yellow pine" or "southern pine") is one of the hard ones (it's over twice as hard as eastern white pine, which is what most people are picturing in their mind when thinking of easily-dented "soft pine"). When people start poo-pooing pine, I tell them what I just told you, and I remind them that the entire framing structure of a house is pine, and pine has been used for flooring and exterior siding and lots of other uses for centuries, and holds up very very well (if maintained properly, which applies to almost any wood). The floors in my house, which was built in 1938, are southern yellow pine (it was at that time, and still is now, very abundant and thus affordable), have never been refinished or really even maintained, and they look great. If I look half this good when I'm 70, it'll be worth drinking to. By "hack traditional", I'm referring to a pet peeve of mine whereby fast-talking sharp-accent rich folks from New York and New Jersey and Michigan and the like, move here to the South - and then, with zero regard to tradition or rural identity or historical integrity - they build a huge modern house that clashes with all the antebellum and mill-era homes that make up the traditional Southern landscape - and they think it's "Southern" because it has a wraparound porch. I'm talking about the people that weren't born or raised here by parents born and raised here - the people who have no real understanding of the fact that this is a region of the larger nation which has its own cultural and architectural identity which ought to be faithfully preserved. The people who see the South simply as a warm, relaxed, "country" sort of place to be exploited and built-up. I find it offensively condescending that rather than seeing me and where I come from as a distinct culture that ought to be respected, that we're viewed as a commodity that can be marketed (I'm picturing that "Luzianne authentic Southern iced tea" TV commercial with the disembodied ceiling fans, and Cracker Barrel, and my blood's about to boil). People don't seem to grasp that everyone with a high-stress job in some dirty city up north wants to come to the warm rural South to relax out in the country - but if enough people do that, you don't have a "country" any more...rural becomes suburbia really quickly, and that destroys the character and feel of the place, not to mention drags along the noise and the crime and the filth and the various other associated problems, and drives up our tax rates, etc. I've seen a tobacco field outside my front door for decades, and I'd like not to see it poured over with concrete and some "planned community" of big 2- and 3-story vinyl-clad cookie-cutter houses with the wide sidewalks and the manicured shrubbery and the BMW and Mercedes SUVs in the driveway, pop up. ANYHOW, sorry for going off on a diatribe for that long. It's a touchy subject for me. My family fought and died here, and I have a heritage and a connection that I deeply care about, and I stiffly resent the encroachment of rich non-Southerners and their big ugly greedy houses and their reprehensible lifestyles. They are to me what illegal Mexican immigrants are to Mr. Lou Dobbs. And in another meaning, when I say "hack traditional" - speaking purely in the architectural sense - I'm talking about folks who claim to want a "Southern traditional" or "Southern country" home - and yet they put in double-pane vinyl or aluminum-clad windows with the fake divided lites, and pre-finished hardwood flooring, and rocker switches, and vinyl siding, and hollow- or engineered-core or MDF doors, and a popcorn ceiling, and computerized kitchen appliances, and faux paint finishes on the walls, and new furniture with a "distressed" (read: fake) finish, and foam or no door and window casing, and roofing that isn't either 3-tab asphalt singles or 5v-crimp metal, and a walk-in pantry with a glass-panel door that has the word "pantry" etched on the glass with a picture of a wheat sheaf, etc. etc. etc. - I could list dozens more examples - there is a difference between real and pretend, between genuine and fake. When I say "traditional", I actually mean it. Not new mass-produced cheap garbage made artificially to look old, and modern architectural details which are in no way traditional or uniquely-Southern. I'm going to shut up about this now before I pop my aorta. Back to the original topic: yellow pine makes an excellent floor. And if you put the right type of finish on it, it has a beautifully warm glow to it and will hold up very well to normal usage (i.e. not doing the can-can on it while wearing steel-spiked golf shoes) -FaSoLa

It doesn't sound good. 2 weeks is long enough to be able to determine if the paint has really adhered or not. What was the topcoat that was used?

Hi Kathrine. It seems like you are well on your way to a solution already, but I would like to clear some of the fog. First, I would like to address oil and wax finishes. Although they do produce a decent finish, they take forever to cure, they will need to be renewed eventually, and they offer little to no protection (when compared to a film finish). In a kitchen, durability is usually the big concern and pure tung oil simply doesnt have a place there. Now if you have a nice antique hall table that you dont mind babying, tung oil and wax could be a good choice. But with the amazing array of beautiful finish options available today, its hard to believe tung oil (and boiled linseed oil), still find their way into our homes. That being said, I am glad you went with the Waterlox. Despite the incorrect information Minwax gave you, Waterlox is not all that different from a wiping polyurethane. Waterlox actually contains little to no tung oil at all. It does, however, contain a resin that is derived from oil and is a close relative to polyurethane. Many woodworkers like this particular resin better because it is less "plastic-looking" than standard polyurethane. So what you have actually done is exactly what I would have recommended: you top-coated your tung oiled surface with a wiping varnish. This varnish will give your cabinets the protection they need from oil, grease, heat, water, and cleaning agents. A level of protection that tung oil cannot provide. And one note to the folks who were discussing "food-safe" finishes. Nearly all film finishes are food safe once cured. If you are a bit skeptical, there are FDA-approved varnishes available (usually labelled salad bowl finish), that will offer much more protection and durability than oil and wax. I apologize for the blitz of information. If anyone has any questions, please feel free to ask away. Marc