Oil or Varnish on Wooden Floor + Advice

Edwardia

The floorboards in our house are all original and they were dark stained so that only the areas which would be under rugs were bare pine.

We really liked this but the floors needed attention. Loads of people were telling us to sand and use polyurethane varnish but we didn't want orange floors, they are hideous.

So we read up, including a lot of American websites.

We cleaned the floors with 5L tubs of distilled malt vinegar and packs of 6 kitchen rolls for 99p from 99p Stores, removing nails and staples. Used wood filler on cracks and replaced wood where needed. Those bits were then sanded with orbital sander and dyed with wood dye from Screwfix to match in with existing colours. Then we painted on shellac (really smelly job, open every window) to seal. Dries really fast so you can paint on Liberon wax and polish off same day.