apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I really wanted to refinish our floors with linseed oil, but the contractor we had recommendations for didn't use that, and we were under a time crunch with our move. We wound up with water-based urethane, which is greener than it might have been but nowhere as green as I wanted. So I'm interested to hear about experiences with oiled floors--great question!

We've done both. In our current house we have only used Tung oil with great results. They weren't too bad as far as nicks and stains, so Tung oil was the perfect (and cheaper) solution to refinishing them. It's a good workout though, you rub it on then need to buff it a few minutes later so it's nice and smooth.

For our new house we just finished (moving soon), we used an all natural polyurethane made from whey (yes, from cheese processing), called Vermont Natural Coatings. The entire house was done with this and so far so good, and the store that we buy it from says they've had nothing but good reviews so far. No, I'm not connected to the company, but I do live in Vermont, so was also very happy to support a local company :-)

i recently used pure tung oil from the realmilkpaint website. I refinished the floors myself, stained them, and then applied the pure tung oil according to the directions on the website. The only thing that makes it a bit tough is the longer drying time, but i did not want to use poly. i would def use it again!

...beware boiled linseed oil from big box stores. Its unnaturally treated with heavy metals and poisonous, legally not suitable or food surfaces therefore not suitable for human contact in my opinion.

And it biodegrades in use if moist, turning black with mildew.