There are no cheaper alternatives! Shop around, one litre should do one coat on all four windows with some left over.

OK, if that's the thing to have, that's what I'll have. Thanks for letting me know. I've now found 3 litres for £125 straight from Holkhams. If that's enough to do the whole job then that's not too bad.

I have used a white gloss water-based paint on exterior woodwork with a reasonable result. I chose it because it lasted the longest in the 'Which' tests a few years ago. It was sold under the name 'Green Paint!!' then but it may have changed since. Good Luck - exterior paints for wood are a pain in the derriere

The link will take you to the shop, which also sells Holkham paints (with a 10% reduction in price during June)

http://www.greenshop.co.uk/natural-paint-128/gloss-exterior-133/?osCsid=pq89ks9j13b0kk7vuhrr4d6h13

Usual disclaimer - just a customer, no connection with the business

Holkhams linseed oil is made by Allbäck Linseed oil Products AB about 15 miles away from me here in Sweden.

http://www.allbackpaint.com/eng/index.php

I've been meaning to pay the factory shop a visit to pick up some oil for my own outdoor woodwork but haven't done so yet so unfortunately can't advise what their direct prices are like.

You could try dropping them a mail to ask about prices. Carriage might knock the good out of it on a small order but if you can get them to give you the weight and dimensions of the parcel someone like postagesupermarket.co.uk or parcelbroker.co.uk will pick it up and deliver to the UK probably at a better rate than they can offer.

holkhams claim 20m2/litre - I can't believe that 1 litre wouldn't be enough for several coats on four windows, unless they are patricularly big and "woody"

I finally got around to dropping over to the Allbäck factory last week and bought some black pigmented linseed oil paint. The price was 335SEK per litre incl. 25% vat, which is about £32 at today's spot rate.

I was using it on all my soffit and fascia, I gave everything a coat of raw linseed oil first it took just under 6 litres, the raw linseed oil costs 462SEK for 5 litres.

I was racing against time and had just two days to get the job done after the scaffold went up and before the plasterers started work. Had I had more time I would have given it a second coat of raw linseed oil before using the black paint. The rough sawn timber soaked up much much more oil than the planed timber.

I used just under 3 and a half litres of the pigmented linseed oil to do the job. I don't know how many sq. metres of timber I covered but there is approx. 85 linear metres of soffit and fascia on the house.

Very happy with the result, but only time will tell how good a job it does.

In the factory showroom they had 18 year old laminate flooring in much of the area, in fairness it was probably pretty good quality laminate to start with, the Pergo factory is just down the road here also. They had grown tired of it's appearance and they had painted it with an off-white linseed oil paint, I have to say it looked a million dollars and it I hadn't been told I would have sworn it was a painted wood floor. It seemed to traffic very well and they said that they just maintain it with a linseed oil soap. I have plans for a whitewashed oak or ash floor in our living room but if the budget is getting lean by that stage it will now be a painted laminate floor instead! And of course being only 7 or 8mm thick it will perform better than real wood with the UFH.

Posted By: djh When you say laminate floor, do you mean paper-surfaced with a protective film? And that takes linseed oil paint?

Yes, what they themselves referred to as "plastic floor", mdf with a printed wood effect and plastic wear layer on top. £3 or £4 a sq. metre for the cheapest stuff. However you probably need to pay a bit more to get long lengths with a good grain effect that will look the best.

They said that the linseed oil paints covers everything, wood, plastic, metal etc.