So, we have parquet almost everywhere; relatively high-quality oak parquet, oiled.
1. Use high-quality oil. There are huge differences. The oil we have (our builder put it on the parquet for us; we only realized afterward that it’s really great) is expensive but really very high-quality. We recommended it to our carpenter, who made our kitchen and other built-ins, and he was totally amazed and has used only that since then. Unfortunately, I’m in the office today and can’t check the name directly. It’s some kind of two-component oil, and a good parquet installer usually also has a little machine to apply the oil. It looks like an old-fashioned polishing machine. I think it was the Rubio MonoCoat Oil Plus 2C Mix in natural/colorless. We have been living in the house for over 3 years now, and I don’t see why I would have to re-oil...
2. I’m not lightweight either and have parquet in my office combined with the Markus office chair from IKEA. I practically work from home every day (except today…), and after over two years, I can still see no marks on the parquet. In the basement, we have our second office with spruce flooring, and there we have a protective mat.
3. We also have parquet in the kitchen and would definitely do it again. Sure, you see one stain or another, but overall oak is very stain-friendly. The tannic acid contained in oak makes most stains naturally fade after some time (even cat poop stains – we tested that…). Once my husband spilled a bottle of olive oil and it spread all over the kitchen floor; after a few days, you couldn’t see it anymore. At that spot, the wood was just oiled again *ahem*. Overall, we can live with a few signs that show life is happening here. For that, we have flooring that simply feels homey.
4. Cleaning: with parquet, less is more. We have a robot vacuum that runs through the ground floor every other day. We mop every few months, and that’s enough! Maybe you do it more often if you have small children, but it’s not dirty here. For the “damp” cleaning, we have the Bisell, add VERY little cleaner, and it works very well.
Tiles: I would never use dark tiles in the entrance area; you see every footprint on them. We actually like slate and initially wanted slate slabs, but once we realized that they are quite sensitive, we went for tiles with that look. We now have that on the bathroom floor. We like it but would never do that in the entrance area, you’d end up cleaning yourself to death. There, we now have concrete-colored/beige tiles. Sounds boring but is a neutral AND above all easy-to-clean tile. That would be decisive for me for the entrance area, no matter what style it ends up being. Especially with almost two small kids!
Not too many different types of flooring. We have light tiles in the entrance area and guest WC, otherwise oak parquet, and in the bathroom upstairs the dark tiles. In the basement, somewhat cheaper brushed spruce parquet. Also nice; we were just too stingy for oak there. Would do it like that again. By the way, our parquet, despite underfloor heating, is not glued down.
Overall, I would try to keep the floors as neutral as possible and not create a style with them. Then, in the future, if tastes change, you always have the option to decorate differently without having flooring that absolutely doesn’t fit.
That was our motto overall for things that are built in and stay longer: neutral, not style-defining. That applies to floors, bathroom tiles, and windows.
I have to bump this again, as we now have the parquet laid and it has become quite dusty from the subsequent construction work in places – I will probably have to mop it once before moving in.
Now I have no idea what to mop it with. What is a Bisell?
And has anyone tried those Bona things with the parquet cleaner? They get fairly good reviews.
I’m thankful for any tips. I think the vacuum will already remove the roughest dirt, but we won’t get around to one mopping session.
