wax or varnish?

[solpetyie]

For floorboards - in quiet areas, areas with lots of traffic, areas where furniture scrapes - how does each fare in your experience?

For wood around sink areas which gets a lot of water on it which isn't always immediately wiped up?

Thank you!

Bumping - if you have used wax on floor boards I would really love to hear how well it lasted. I would like to use wax not varnish because it will look better, but I am not sure how hard wearing wax is.

Also on a wooden surface near a sink, the varnish has cracked so badly I will able to sand it off easily, and I wondered if wax was a better option, how water resistant it was.

We use Osmo oil. My husband is a cabinet maker so wood is his strong point and he always used Osmo or Fiddes oil, 2 coats.

Ps around the sink nothing will protect it from water, so go ahead and sand the lot, oil it and just be aware that it’ll need redoing every so often.

Another for Osmo polyx oil. The big advantage is as it wears you can just clean and wipe another coat on.

With varnish there is little you can do to refresh other than strip back to wood and start again.

The only disadvantage I have come across is Osmo won't stop the interaction between iron and oak so if you have cast pans and oak surfaces you'll get black rings.

Osmo Polyx oil has an amazing smell. Its a “ hardwax oil” which basicaly is waterproof like varnish but soaks into the wood like an oil. I have used it on every timber surface in our last three houses. Although the only oak has been doors. I did test an oak worktop sample with a steel tin and it did make a black mark, supposedly you can remove those marks with oxalic acid but I’ve never tried it.

I use wax on floorboards and give almost no maintenance and it has lasted extremely well and has a great period look unlike varnish. Also you can just re wax an area yourself in minutes on top of existing unlike damaged varnish.

+1 for Osmo Polyx Oil. The 'Raw' leaves a natural yet muted finish.

It's worth investing in a natural bristle floor head brush and broom handle, to apply it to floorboards. Osmo sell them but there are cheaper alternatives.

Thank you all, much appreciated.

I'd disagree, unless you want the maintenance, with oil or wax you need to keep re applying. When we bought this house, the floor had been oiled, what a fucking mess because they failed to keep doing it every few months.

We had it sanded back and then four coats of industrial clear varnish applied, won't need to be touched for years.

So if you're happy to re apply every six months then oil or wax it. If you're not bang up for that, then varnish.

Osmo polyx oil, it looks lovely, isn't like traditional oil so is water resistant, stain resistant, doesn't need sanding back and redoing, ever, if you damage it (scratch it installing the new slate hearth, thanks fitter) , it is easily touched up. PIL varnished and had to sand back and redo five years later and their floor was shinier than I prefer. After we did ours they used polyx oil the second time. It is more expensive but not in the long term