When we bought the apartment, the floor was covered with layers of plastic laminate as well as the typical 'ox blood' painted floor boards. A contractor ripped up the laminate boards immediately, and he undertook the painstaking work of sanding down the layers of paint. From there, however, we wanted a very specific Scandinavian-inspired stain and we didn’t want the wood to be sealed so we did this work ourselves. In keeping with our love for tactile surfaces – from our vintage hemp to the raw zelij – we wanted the wood to remain in its virgin state: unsealed. After we applied a very watered-down whitewash stain, we added just a thin later of wax to protect the wood from spills, and it remains unsealed which makes walking barefoot such a pleasure.