Need help finishing solid wood floorboards

[Goawayangryman]

I have inherited solid flooring. When I moved in it was yellowy-brown and knackered.

I hired a sanding machine and spent 2 12 hour days sanding the fecker down. It looked lovely... pale, smooth, even. I then used Osmo Hardwax Polyx oil raw on my beautiful sanded planks. 2 years and a puppy later, it looks really horrible, despite regular maintenance. Like an Irish bar floor after a heavy weekend. The finish wasn't durable at all and it's gone orange again.

Have started the job of sanding it down again and am planning to carefully refinish in small sections ( this is the only way I can do it for time and pet-related reasons...)

Can anyone give me step by step instructions on how to keep the wood pale but well-finished? What products should I use?? I'd love dinesen style soap and lye but it would be decimated within the week. I'm thinking an oil with a very white tint and then wax the hell out of it. But the Hardwax (even with osmo) seems to discolour the wood...

Professional job not an option. I've not had a real terms payrise in 12 years and am a single parent 😁

Oil is not very hardwearing. For that you'll need lacquer. I wouldn't attempt that myself but there are loads of YouTube videos for the brave people.

Another one here without a real terms payrise in 12 years.

Which is one of the reasons why we've also sanded most of our floors ourselves.

We love the yellowish orangey brownishness of our floors - they add warmth and light and texture to each room, which changes with the weather and the time of day and how the light falls (one room Osmo, the rest varnish).

It sounds though like this is not what you want - so maybe go with a thin whitewash, followed by a clear varnish? Sort of painted but not, and with a harder (ie varnished) top than paint?

We painted ours with regular emulsion, then used a really hard wearing lawyer on top - it’s the stuff used in galleries / theatres when they paint the floors for exhibitions. If you water down the emulsion, it can give you a pale, watered down result. The lacquer is called Aqualak - there’s a (better? More expensive) version by Bona but we had ours for 2 years and it held up brilliantly with kids / animals.

it takes a while to do - 2 coats of emulsion + 3 coats of lacquer (but these dry quickly so can do a couple of coats a day, maybe all 3.

Having said all that, we had very basic pine floorboards that were a state anyway - I don’t know if I would want to do it to original hardwood planks and ruin the natural beauty.

have you considered engineered / laminate flooring? It’s so easy to lay and very hard wearing.

There's no way I'd lift existing hardwood floors and replace with engineered wood! Another vote for Bona Mega or Bona Traffic, you need varnish, not oil.

I'm in the same boat op and got great advice from bona. Sand back to raw wood, then 1 x bona white primer or 2 coats natural for a slightly less bleached look, or 1 coat natural just to keep the pale wood look. Then bona traffic HD - not ordinary bona traffic. It dries more quickly and is a commercial grade hardness, the best on the market. It comes in extra Matt which will give you the Dinesen look.

@resuwen good for you. There’s no way I’d whitewash hardwood flooring and slather on plastic, but each to their own. I was suggesting they lay engineered wood over the top to get the look they want and preserve the hardwood for the next occupiers.

What kind of timber is it?

I don't think slather on plastic is fair - it's the best way to protect the existing wood from damage by the dog. Oil just doesn't cut it in those circumstances.

If they are pine/softwood boards, they will get worn and try to darken, you might just be fighting a losing battle.

I think that modern polyurethanes have come a long way in the last 10 years @NotMeNoNo - when we first did our floors we wouldn't have touched them with a bargepole but the Osmo failed after about 3 years wherever there was medium traffic. And that was before we got the dog!

Bona do both lacquer and oil, and they both have the same 'Scandi pale' options as Osmo. The lacquers have primers which work like Osmo raw and white, and although I expect there will be some darkening over time the lacquers are much better at preventing the wood from reacting with the light than oil is.

Their Traffic HD is the most hard-wearing floor finish on the market. Unlike Osmo or other oils you can increase the number of coats in high-traffic areas - and you can actually slap another coat or coats on top rather than sanding back in between, just as you can with oil. It's a bit of a miracle product as far as I can see. I am currently staring at the cast iron rads in denial about the fact that I've got to take them off the wall.

Thank you everyone, belatedly! It is oak flooring but I don't like the orange tone, doesn't go with my decor. The bona stuff sounds great and I reckon I will investigate that further.