Q: I wanted to live in a wooden house, so I refurbished my house to install cypress flooring. However, I am worried because I am not sure how to properly take care of it. I find commercial flooring material has a terrible feel to it, so I approached a local artisan who laid down flooring made of specially processed cypress. I treated it with perilla oil as a trial, as recommended by a carpenter.
In future, what can I do to maintain the texture, color and shine unique to the wood?

A:
These days, fewer and fewer people practice “dry cloth polishing” after a fresh oil coating. However, when you coat a wooden floor with natural oil, the more you do polish it with a dry cloth, the more the floor becomes shiny, bringing out the exquisite beauty of the wood. In addition, the dry cloth polish enables you to detect the right timing for another coat of oil, because the daily ritual informs you if there is inadequate oil. By keeping this routine, you can keep your floor looking impeccable indefinitely. It depends on how often you walk on the floor, but your oil coating routine should be as follows; wet a towel and thoroughly wring it before using it to remove any stains, apply a light layer of oil once every several months and simply polish it with a dry cloth. This is all you need to do to maintain a healthy, shiny floor.
One word of caution: be careful when applying rapeseed oil to floors or corridors, since its semi-drying nature makes the wood slippery.