oak floors - what do i do with them to keep them looking nice?

[vonsudenfed]

We bought a house with oak flooring - it's very lovely, but I do not have the foggiest idea how to maintain it. They're big boards and, I think, have been waxed rather than varnished. We wash them with the Ecover thing with linseed oil in it, but that's not enough.

And now that we've been living in the house for more than a year, the finish is starting to wear, esp in the kitchen. So how do I keep it nice? We wash them with the Ecover thing with linseed oil in it, but that's not enough.

I've had a look around homebase, but all of the waxes are paint on and take hours to dry, which is rather less than practical as the boards cover the entire ground floor, and there's lots of heavy furniture there. Oh, and it's all open-plan so there's no way of keeping the cats off it.

I did try a small patch with plain beeswax polish, and that worked, but I can't see it lasting.

So what do I do? Grit my teeth and get it all repainted (and nail the cats to the ceiling in the meantime) or is there something blindingly obvious I am missing?

spoke to my dp who lays real wood flooring he says if waxed finish then its not much coverage for the floor at all , all you can do is keep applying wax to build up the finish again a maintenance wax if you can if not then bees wax just keep applying and build it up

he also said if you have a thin waxed or oiled floor then they recommend every 6 mths that you re oil or wax it to maintain it anyway but as for putting too much on it unless you know whats already on there , theres not much you can do apart from applying the bees wax and building up a nice finish

There is no way around it - waxing/oiling needs to be done every few years to nourish the wood. We coat our oak floor with Osmo Polyx-Oil once every couple of years. It is wax oil and has a beautiful finish. We do the first half in one evening (move all the furniture to the other half), it dries overnight, then do the second half the next morning. We always do two coats over the high traffic areas. Easy to apply with a paint sponge.

I was afraid you were going to say that.

Thankyou. I think we may have to get someone in to do it, while we go away and put the cats in a cattery. (I read the Osmo oil thing and that said wait 72 hours before putting furniture and rugs back - we have no corridor or hall and so can't see any other way of doing it!)