Miscellaneous

Wooden floor

Our entire house is covered with a beautiful wooden floor (dating back to the origins of the building in 1906). The wood was varnished but needed to be redone. We had the floor sanded everywhere, including the staircase (this is really detailed work and requires a lot of precision and patience). Once this was done, I felt our house had turned into some Scandinavian designer’s showroom- it was so light and pure.

We weighed the different options and decided for an ecological oil.

Pros

-       keeps the colour of the wood relatively light, which lits up the rooms

-       healthier than varnish- not only because its ecological and there is no strange smell when you apply it, but also because as its getting older, there are no particles flying in the air that you’d breath in)

-       simple option- if there is a damage somewhere or you need to re-do the treatment on a certain area, you can go ahead. With the varnish, you are obliged to re-sand the entire surface and re-apply the product

Cons

-       the wood is not as protected, you have to be really careful with stains and clean everything super fast

-       general cleaning is not obvious- normally it happens with water and with some sort of a “nurturing“ product, but our experience is that this is not very efficient

After having lived in the house for over a year, we wonder whether the oil was the most convenient option. It looks nice, we enjoyed the matt surface of the wood, but its very fragile and not easy to clean.