I recently moved to Dubai from Seattle and installed beautiful engineered 6" "oil rubbed" plank flooring in my rustic home. The floors are beautiful but the dust in Dubai makes maintenance unbearable. The wood is like sandstone, everything sticks and soaks into this wood, its horrible! the product is Ipowood Kentucky Plank from Germany. Although called and looks "oil rubbed" the material is very dry and non-oily.

It would seem that sealing the floors is my only option, and I am investigating what products I can use to do this, given the existing "oil rubbed" finish. I have a sample board on which I have tested several oil based urethane products (Miniwax Quick Dry and Urethane 20 from Synteko) and they both adhere really well, bring out the color of the floors, and seal them exactly the way I'd hoped.

However, the guy that sold and installed the flooring is telling me a urethane finish cannot be installed on top of an "oil rubbed" floor. because 95% of their work is pre-finished i am not confident these guys in dubai are technically capable to know the answer.

thanks all!

I cant say that I know much about an "oil rubbed floor" But I do know my polyurethane (oil or water) wont adheare to a floor with oil involved.

Maybe some universal sealer, then some oil based poly

We just installed an engineered pre-finished pine floor that came with an oiled finish. The manufacturers instructions called for another coat of oil after installation. This wood was dry and non-oily like the description raintree gave and it had been oiled by the manufacturer.

After applying the Trip Trap Masteroil not only was the floor beautiful but the surface was hard and smooth enough to repel spills and be cleaned normally.

I would try it on a small test area before doing the entire floor.

Thanks for the feedback!

The problem is these floors are (although oiled) bone dry, very porous, and unfinished. Drop a potato chip on the floor it leaves a stain and don't repel water like you'd think. They're like a pair of "new buck shoes", gorgeous but impossible to maintain.

I was steered to Timber-ex Satin oil (a maintenance product) which I tried but not the result i wanted and think would blow any chance of a future successful urethane finish.

Its hard to describe. Anyone you suggest i can FedEx a sample to for an evaluation (and a happily paid fee if need be)?

thanks again. bill

Keep putting the oil on it and keep rubbing.... It's now called 'required maintenance".