For years, I've been looking forward to putting down wood floors with a tung oil finish, held back by a messy cat who passed in May and the fact that the only product we saw when we first fell for it was 3/4" planks over 3/4" plywood and we really didn't want to raise our floors, doors, baseboards, everything 1-1/2". I'm now seeing unfinished 1/2" boards that can be glued down over concrete (this is mesquite and what I am reading and hearing is that the stability of mesquite makes it somewhat unique here).

I told the first supplier this really appealed to me because I was more interested in a tung oil finish than the engineered floors I'd seen that looked more like laminate than real wood. She said the customers they had do tung oil sanded down and refinished because the tung oil showed dirt too much.

I hadn't heard that before. Has anyone here had that experience? Does that sound like too much oil was left on the wood? I wonder if they were looking for a sheen.

What she did recommend was Waterlox, perhaps in a satin finish. She said it had the same spot retouching/buffing benefits of tung oil with some additional protection and didn't show dirt like tung oil. I'm interested in reactions to that. Other thoughts welcome too. Thanks