Durable natural wooden floor finishes?

2 1/2 years ago we finished our hardwood floors with a mixture of tung oil and orange solvent, we used two coats of this. This seems to have worked really well in some parts of the house, but in kitchen and mud room I don't think we let it cure for long enough, and also didn't buff with a rag between coats, and maybe two coats were not enough, so the floor doesn't look very good in those rooms, and I might want to try recoating them soon. I'm not sure whether to try doing tung oil with more coats and buffing, or to try something different.

Has anyone here successfully used natural finishes on wooden floors in a busy kitchen? What did you use? Did you have any special ways of cleaning them or maintaining them?

In our house, with Eastern White Pine Flooring (wide), we did....nothing.

In fact, in most of our house, that is what we did. I know that sounds silly, but really what are you protecting the wood from? How many times do you scrub the ceilings? So with that thought in mind, we never bothered with putting Polyurethane on them, which saved time, money, and the off-gassing that happens from it. The same for the window trim, and the like.

With the wide pine flooring, we hemmed and hawed about it, but in the end did nothing. This was pine sawed from our own trees, so we did not even end up planning them on a planer, we just screwed them to the floor, and then noticed over time, just walking on them slowly wore them down smooth, and we are a shoeless house too.

We just refinished them after five years of being installed as flooring, and it only took 2 hours, and some sandpaper on a little ole 6 inch orbital sander to make them look like new again. In the big scheme of things, that is nothing. I think the cost was $40.

I know this thought is not for everyone, but if floors look like crud after 5 years applying a finish, and it takes 5 years for a non-finished floor to look like crud, why not do nothing and clean them up every five years with some sandpaper and be done? All I am saying is, sometimes doing nothing is an option too.

I was searching for an answer to Kate’s question and found this thread. Kate - what did you end up doing?

I’ve recently removed carpet, underlay, tiles and ply to revel 160 year old pine boards which have been painted. It’s going to take some work to clean them up but they look in good condition. I would like to put a natural finish on them - any suggestions?

Edward Norton wrote:I was searching for an answer to Kate’s question and found this thread. Kate - what did you end up doing?

I’ve recently removed carpet, underlay, tiles and ply to revel 160 year old pine boards which have been painted. It’s going to take some work to clean them up but they look in good condition. I would like to put a natural finish on them - any suggestions?

We ended up doing nothing.

The trick I've found to keeping it clean is to not let it get wet or get water tracked in from wet places - I put a towel at the kitchen sink and that helps. When it does get dirty, it can be scrubbed with very hot water and that works. Maybe not as easy as a finished floor, but it's fine.

The bedrooms still look great with the tung oil/orange solvent mix after 5 years, it's just the areas that got wet when the oil was curing that don't have the coating now.

My feeling about this is that people usually finish exposed wood for a reason. With floors, an oil or wax will stop it getting damp and rotting. It will also seal the wood and allow you to mop it, or wipe it with a damp cloth, if you wish to.

An unsung benefit, that I think is worth considering, is that unfinished wood is far more susceptible to wood-boring beetles ("furniture beetles" or "wood worm"). This is particularly true when the wood is allowed to get damp, such as is likely to happen with floorboards around an external doorway (at least in my rainy climate!). Most of the cottages in this part of the world had earthen floors on the ground floor and these would cause the legs of furniture, tables and chairs in particular, to become damp. I've noticed that many antiques have woodworm in these places but almost nowhere else.

A final thought is that unfinished wood will be oiled naturally through use. I opted not to apply any oil to some antique chairs that I have recently purchased and, just a few months later, the seat, chair backs and some of the supporting lathes are developing a lovely patina. The look is very irregular however and, in the wrong setting (such as a neat, more modern house), it would look out of place or even "dirty".

Oh, and Edward, I would consider applying a small area of BLO, Tung oil, hard wax and Danish oil and comparing the results. All of the above will seal your floorboards (should you wish to) but they may cause the wood to colour quite differently.

I find BLO to be a little orange for my liking and generally prefer tung oil. In some woods, however, I find that tung brings out an unsightly gray colour in the grain (hazel and sometimes beech, in particular). I've not used hard wax or wax oils but I've seen some impressive results that use them.

Good luck and do post some before/after shots!

Kate Downham wrote:
We ended up doing nothing.

The trick I've found to keeping it clean is to not let it get wet or get water tracked in from wet places - I put a towel at the kitchen sink and that helps. When it does get dirty, it can be scrubbed with very hot water and that works. Maybe not as easy as a finished floor, but it's fine.

The bedrooms still look great with the tung oil/orange solvent mix after 5 years, it's just the areas that got wet when the oil was curing that don't have the coating now.

Thanks Kate for the update.

All the floors I’m restoring are upstairs bedrooms so good to know tung oil / orange solvent is still looking good after 5 years. I haven’t decided what to do about the bathroom but good to know about the issue with water. Since living in Asia, we’ve adopted a no shoe policy which is easy as we have a large porch / mudroom.

Thanks Luke, really interesting observations. I know what you mean about the patina, something I find particularly pleasing on wooden tool handles.  I’m back in NJ for a bit of RR and catchup on admin and batch cooking so I’ll post some pictures at the weekend when I back in the house. The latest floor to be revealed is in poor condition which got me thinking, am I doing the right thing? The wood is probably white pine, very common here. It’s quite soft so probably not the best solution for exposed floors. There’s some damage, missing sections replaced with ply and stains, splitting and big gaps. I don’t mind a challenge but I could just be putting lipstick on a pig.

I haven’t tried their floor finish yet but I really like the furniture finish I got from Vermont Natural Coatings so might be worth trying their floor finish.
It’s made from whey, totally nontoxic, has zero off gassing, and has held up really well in our house. I used it to seal the wood top of our small kitchen island. That surface is our main food prep area so it handles all kinds of liquids (water, food spills, etc), plus all types of food containers (glass, metal, etc). There is no evidence of stains, water damage, chips, or cracks- I think the wood looks as good as the day we built it 2+ years ago.

I have near zero concerns about insect infestations. If I have to worry about that for my floors, I've got bigger problems and need to start figuring out how to protect all the raw wood making up the rafters, walls, sill plates and so on.

What I would worry about is, moisture gain AND loss.

If the wood gains moisture, whether because of snow laden boots, high humidity or cleaning, the wood is going to swell. If the joints were tight, the wood will buckle.  

If the wood loses moisture, and more often than not it will, it's going to shrink. Shrinking results in cracking and splitting.

In most cases, wood we get will have a higher moisture content than wood already in the house (furniture, etc.). As such, it's going to shrink.  More so when you use a heating method that pulls moisture from the air, like a wood burner, or a refrigeration system to cool the air. Essentially, they are big dehumidifiers.

Even air blowing across a floor can alter the section affected. When finished hardwood floor finishes go south and need replacement (past the maintenance stage, due to neglect), areas in front of fridges will show increase indication of wood shrinkage.

To limit moisture gain and loss, we seal it. Ideally, we seal it all the way around, such as by flow coating with thinned product. Too, it may be preferable to use a product which soaks into the wood.

Hardening oils (e.g., tung oil, linseed oil) can do that, but they are soft and don't play well with water and don't hold up to abrasion. High traffic areas, understandably, require more maintenance than areas that never see wear.

I worked a heritage home which had shellac finish floors. Though it's not a highly durable finish. It's a breeze to maintain. Just clean it and add the next coat. No need to sand or scuff between coats, since the alcohol in the new application softens the existing coat and the new and old coat blend together.

Tung oil would be less durable than even shellac, but, again, it's easy to maintain when it wears down (I suspect you gave it enough time and it was just the increased traffic that wore off the soft finish).

In the end, polymerized oil (poly) is used on wood floors for a reason - durability.  If you address areas wearing thin (lightly sand, clean and apply a couple fresh coats), you don't have to go all out and take the floor all back to bare wood and put the finish back on. In reality, a maintained floor should last longer than we will.

The BLO had hardeners and tung oil too, unless it's raw, which would take forever and three days to harden.  In the end, through a bit of resin into the BLO mix and you have poly.

Edward Norton wrote:The latest floor to be revealed is in poor condition which got me thinking, am I doing the right thing? The wood is probably white pine, very common here. It’s quite soft so probably not the best solution for exposed floors. There’s some damage, missing sections replaced with ply and stains, splitting and big gaps. I don’t mind a challenge but I could just be putting lipstick on a pig.

They may be old growth pine which is a whole different beast from the pine you buy at any lumber yard today. I used to live in a small bungalow built in 1925. The public floors were oak, but the bedroom floors were old growth “heart pine” it was just as durable as the oak. And finer grained which meant that it did not capture dirt the walls oak can. Also in my opinion the heart pine has a fascinating pattern of growth rings.

On those floors of the heritage house (the Byrd House, Olympia, Washington) I worked on, they were ALL Northwet red cedar. It doesn't get much softer than that. In spite of that, they were in very good shape, because the owners, over the eighty or so years the house stood, maintained the shellac finish, as needed.

Chris Tully wrote:They may be old growth pine which is a whole different beast from the pine you buy at any lumber yard today. I used to live in a small bungalow built in 1925. The public floors were oak, but the bedroom floors were old growth “heart pine” it was just as durable as the oak. And finer grained which meant that it did not capture dirt the walls oak can. Also in my opinion the heart pine has a fascinating pattern of growth rings.

Chris, I think you are right. Now that I have stripped the paint, repaired and sanded smooth, I really appreciate how beautiful they are. They have many knots, which i think are beautiful, the grain is fine and they are a lot harder than I originally thought. I’m really happy with them now they are coated in tung oil.