Wax or varnish?

[NoMoreWineForMeThen]

Which would you recommend for stripped pine floor boards?

In one room we oiled and waxed the boards. I wasn't too keen on the initial orange tinge we ended up with (even though we used colourless oil and wax) but with time the orange is calming down. It does look good but feels a little high maintenance and will need waxing regularly.

The next room we will be treating is the main 'living' room of the house and I wondered whether clear varnish would be a better option as it would be harder wearing and 'mopable'. Will it look a good though?

Regardless of the look, apparently if you varish and it gets a dink in it you cannot "patch" it up - you would need to strip the whole floor and do the whole floor. If oiled or waxed you can just sand down the "spot" and re-oil/wax it.

Ah that's interesting, could end up being more work than waxing then? Hmmm....

Hi NoMoreWine,

I'm just about to strip my pine floorboards and have done a little (ie googling till my eyes bleed) research.

Apparently hard wax oil is only suitable for hardwood flooring only and not pine - I don't know why though.

We have hard wax oak flooring* in the kitchen which is lovely and I wanted to have the same finish in the other (pine floorboard) rooms so I'm going to use Bona Mega silk matt varnish which I've been told gives a finished look similar to a buffed waxed floor and is very scratch resistant.

*We opted for the hard wax finish as we are hopefully going to have children and a dog at some point as we were told it was possible to spot repair. There are a couple of scratches made by somebody dragging the washing machine (grrr) into place and I simply used the natural soap solution on them and they're not noticable now.

If you don't like the colour you can alway stain the floorboards first, or if you are sticking with the wax/oil then I know Osmo do a range of tinted waxes.