Old wood = drier. The grain is tighter and doesn't open up (ie. absorb or grab) with stain as much as new. That is true. My question is this: are you SURE this is the same species??? Did you send away a sample of your old floor to a lab to ENSURE you have red oak?

Did you pay for "water popping"? Did the flooring COMPANY (ahem...the company that you paid to SOURCE your wood and then install using one of their professional wood flooring installers) ensure you had a plank match that INCLUDED cut (not just thickness and width)?

If you did the sourcing yourself, did you hire a flooring professional who is VERY well schooled at staining? Or did someone working on your kitchen tell you they could do the work? A wood flooring professional who installs, sands and stains wood for a living would know the answer to your question immediately (your installer had to "call someone" to give you the 3 options above). This tells me there is something missing in the professional's education....like stopping and contacting you to let you know the colour was DIFFERENT on the two different woods (instead of continuing with finish and hoping you wouldn't notice).

Yes going lighter will hide this much more...natural will work even BETTER. And yes, red oak has red in it. That's where it gets its name.

Personally I would sand it down and then go natural. I would live with it for 15 years or so (hoping the wood density will even out) and then try again with a stain at that time.

May I ask what ‘water popping’ is? I’m in a similar situation but at the beginning stage (haven’t yet laid the new flooring) and want to make sure the stain matches as best I can

Water popping is something your professional wood flooring installer can offer. Some moisture is added to the raw wood to "open up" the grain so the wood accepts more stain. This technique often highlights the grain (mineral streaks) more than staining alone.

Hi SJ,

Am I sure about the species? No. I saw a picture of a white and red oak splice and it did look something like this. My installer is sure it is red oak. No, we didn't send anything to a lab as I figured the installer knew what he was doing. My contractor for my kitchen (who I've personally known to 25 years and does outstanding work) recommended him. My contractor tends to work on higher end homes so I figured he recommendation would also have to cater to those expecting a quality job. My contractor hasn't seen it in person yet, but, from the picture I sent him, agrees it needs to be re-done.

I just learned about water popping today after reading the forums. From what I see, it would allow more stain in the non-grained areas, making the floor darker overall. I don't think that's really want we want either. But, if it evens the whole thing out, maybe is an option. I don't know if this installer can do it though.

Now, for the 3 options. I don't think he called anyone. I think he was pushing back when we talked to him in person to see if we would just accept his new vs old wood explanation and live with it. My wife is almost OK with that but I'm not. I did tell him that once he saw the difference after the stain that he should have left us know (we left town since we couldn't be in the house for a week). I'm definitely not happy with the job (the last coat of sealer was also inconsistent in spots which he acknowledged and said he would re-do. I do feel he tried just getting the job done and was hoping we didn't notice or care once he gave an explanation. He knows that is not the case now.

How far from natural can I go without the different wood really showing? I wasn't expecting an exact match but this is definitely too much. We would like some warmth to the wood from a brown tone. Clearly this color we used is too much for this floor.

Thanks,

Derek

Did you hire the person or did the General Contractor hire him? If you hired him, you will have to act as the General Contractor and do all the negotiating on your own behalf (which is why you are reaching out on this forum before going back to him with newly gleaned information).

It will be hard to tell what "stain" will give you the desired effect while hiding the laced in edge. To figure this out, the area needs to be sanded down to raw wood. Then the professional will do STAIN PATCHES (rather large ones I suggest) OVER TOP OF the laced edge. He will also add a single coat of finish so that you can CHOOSE the stain that most resembles your desired look. I HIGHLY recommend an area of "unstained" wood receive a large patch of "finish" as well. This is what you will compare everything to.

And to be clear, the stain you show above is ranked as a "light mid-tone". It isn't very deep at all. It will take sitting down with some samples of the DuraSeal stain line to see if there is something LIGHTER than what you have. DuraSeal states that all of their stains can be lightened by adding in some neutral to thin out the colour.

If you like the TONES in your warm/orange/brown floor, it is possible to go lighter. You will need to ask the professional to offer 4-5 sample patches (with a coat of finish) for the next attempt.

Can you spot the spliced in board here? This is a 1933 floor with a single piece of new flooring inserted. To be fair, it is probably easier to sneak in one board than an entire section.

I would not have continued on to coating the floor if the stain was so mismatched, but pethaps it wasn't as obvious before the finish went on

Yeah, I hired him directly. Would have been nice if he was through my contractor so I could just dump this on him. His other 2 recommendations were really good so didn't have reason to believe this one would be any different.

Stain patches are probably the way to go. I'd rather not just pick something and then end up with another entire floor in a state we don't like.

@Lyndee Lee - I'm guessing it's the middle board, top 1/3rd of the picture. If not that one, then the one 2 boards over, 1/2 of the picture. Either way, it blends in really good and I wouldn't know anything was done if you didn't say something (and that assumes I even picked the right board).

It honestly looks pretty good from here. Its almost impossible to get an exact match in color and it is feathered in nicely. The more you mess with it, the more you might screw it up worse. lol Once you get some furniture or a rug in here to break it up it won't be so noticeable.

Hi - not a professional, but I'm wondering how it looks when the shutters are open and light is hitting the darker wood. I'm also wondering your plans for the space. Will a large rug cover most of the area where the two sections meet? If so, it may not be so noticeable once it's furnished. Not sure what can be done to correct it.

I suspect you would forget about it once you have furniture in. What about a negotiation on price?

It looks the same with the shutters open. The reason for them being closed was so I could turn on the recessed lights to even the lighting out. This picture is a decent representation of how it looks in person.

For furniture, we will have a dining table going in on the new side. The couches on the old side. No area rugs in the new side or transition area. We had one for the old wood side and that is likely to go back in.

I do agree it will be lessened with furniture but this is not the result we expected nor were told could happen. I wasn't expecting anywhere near an exact match. We actually have the original stain on the rest of the wood flooring and the two areas where this new stain meets with it look better than this does.

I had some identical hardwood feathered in when a small pony wall was removed during a rental remodel. We used some boards that had been installed in a closet; sanded everything and restained. It didn't match exactly. I expect the closet wood wasn't as dry and had less uv exposure than the rest. It was old school character white oak. I thought it looked bad but no one has complained or seemed to notice.

@Derek - The new board is 6 from the left, with the two face nails on the end. It is virtually impossible to tell, but the board is slightly wider. The floor joists in this house switch direction and the flooring does as well, just a few boards over. Directly over the joist change was a large gap across the whole floor, between two boards, it was wide enough that two quarters would fit in the gap. Our solution was to take a piece of 3 1/4 wood and cut it down to be 3/16ths wider and replace the board beside the gap.

It would be interesting to see pictures of the floor after sanding, before the stain was applied. I wonder if the difference was noticeable without stain

I think once you put a table and other furniture there - let alone a rug, you wouldn't notice the transition.

I added an area of tiles to a previously tiled section of my entrance and hallway. It was suggested that we rip out the existing tiled area, because the new grout might look a bit different. (The tiles were the same batch.) I left the existing and although there is a slight difference, no-one has ever noticed. I took the precaution of adding an eye-catching piece of wall art nearby.

I would just carry on if I were you.

It's a dining or sitting area off a tiled kitchen? Add a generous and lovely rug and move on! It will help keep folks from tripping and falling off that annoying low rise step.............

We don't have any plans to put a rug in where the transition area is. The area rug we had in there before was on the old wood side. There really won't be anything covering that space.

On the step up area (which you don't really see in the picture), we also had some new wood laced in with the old (from the removal of a pony wall). The wood flooring extends from the end of the tile in the kitchen through the rest of the house. There are 2 boards width plus the step down edge and they actually blend a bit better. I assume part of the problem is the large space.

@Jan Moyer - this is a great room, and other than the tile kitchen, the rest of the house is wood flooring (sans bathrooms). The step does suck, but we're living with it. The potential to change the stain on the great room floor would accentuate that there is a level change.

There are, what I believe, are sander marks anyway, so re-sanding probably needs to happen. Going with some test stain patches is the best way forward I think. At least we'll have a better idea of what we'll have to live with. I'm just hoping we can get some warmth in the floor color without the more dramatic transition change (it is a bit more than what the picture shows but the picture does demonstrate the change).

I realize this was a long time ago but what did you do I. The end and were you happy) we have the same situation after a kitchen remodel and the GC says he warned me (I don’t remember that) and that this was a high quality job, and as best as they could do. But I think they took no special effort to lace similarly toned pieces. And they only staggered by 1-4 inches or so. I think we need to replace the old wood, but are being told that the ENTire floor them needs to be resanded and stained to make it all match. Even though the “new floors was just done 6 months ago.