Tung Oil

We love tung oil. If you want to do a green renovation in a Brooklyn brownstone you can’t do it without tung oil. All the floors, stairs and banisters need to be treated with something. Usually it is some nasty poly or paint application.

We use tung oil. It is a key element in our green building repertoire. We buy our tung oil from Real Milk Paint out of Pennsylvania. They are very knowledgeable. It is a small business so you get real hands on service.

Another good place if you are in the Baltimore area is Amicus Green Building Center. They sell tung oil too.

Our Brooklyn show house is ready for floor treatments so we just ordered 5 gallons of tung oil from them. It comes in one day because they are pretty local.

Tung oil has been used for thousands of years in China. It comes a from the nut of the tung tree. They do have the tree in the US now but still most of the oil is shipped from China. I have issues with that because of the energy wasted in shipping. But it is one of the few exceptions I make to buying things that have been shipped half way across the world.target