Maybe the new boards can be adjusted with a tinted version of the same finish? if you have extra boards, I'd have a sample made on one of those.

What did 'refinish' mean to you? It appears they stained and did not first use a conditioner that would improve the stain being absorbed more evenly. IDK about fir but it works great on pine.

Is the large portion of the floor stained or not? Or is it clear coated?

New wood, will never exactly match old wood, and agree that doesn't look like fir, which does not stain well at all.

Who said it was fir? I don't think so and thta is where your trouble began . IMO the guy doing the floor should have mentioned this was not fir but often the guy doing the work is just doing what he is told to do.

Two flooring contractors came out and both said doug fir. I don't know enough to be able to say what it is. It was sanded, clear coated, refinished. Would have hoped the old and new could have been mixed/moved around to blend more or a stain with color to make it less stark. Not sure what the wood is if not df additional photos attached and I'm so sorry the app has been really buggy on my phone if I try to delete any words they re-appear in duplicate/triplicate.

Spouse here. Here are a couple more photos of the completed original material. Contractor states that moving boards around is not possible because old fir is too brittle although the non-damaged pieces that were removed in the area where new material went in came out without issue.

There was no stain put on anything, I'm not sure why the contractor's photo came out so red.

As JC said, refinish was repair damage with some replacements and filler, set all nails, sand. Then 1 coat Duraseal oil based sealer and 2 coats DuraSeal oil based polyurethane.

If there was no stain ever involved, that's why you have drastically different colors of wood ... both woods were just given sealer and poly, but the old wood and new wood started different colors because the old wood has changed color as it aged.

A good contractor should have pointed out the difference in the two woods and discussed possibilities for addressing this, but in absence of that discussion, this is exactly what I'd expect.

You can apply a toner coat.

The old floor doesn't look like it was sanded enough but, perhaps there wasn't enough wood above the tongue for more thorough sanding.

Yes, they should have discussed the color difference with you and options, including staining the new pieces to attempt to get a match.

It doesn't look that bad though, I assume this is an old house if it has narrow doug fir flooring and that beautiful woodwork? (My 1893 victorian has the same) -- in these old house this kind of funky thing is part of the charm. Leave them an honest review on Google or Yelp and move on, or ask them to screen/sand the new stuff and stain it -- offer to pay for the staining labor but not the screen/refinish as they should have discussed this with you.

We had a similar situation in our house and they discussed how to stain the new stuff to match even though our existing floors had a wide variety of patina/texture/color variation going on. It's just an obvious thing to bring up to the homeowner. They couldn't get a perfect match but they blended it pretty well -- which did require staining the entire floor, staining just they new section wasn't an option. New section got additional coat of stain though.

@G & S Floor Service, the toner would go over this finish, right? So no need to remove what's there ...

Yes, apply a toner coat to new stuff. Right on top of the finish, buff first.

The contractor said any replacement wood wouldn't be an exact match. We acknowledged and understand that and had no problem with 'not exact'. We didn't know that meant, "no effort to match".

@stellarceline yes, 1900. We chose this contractor because he is 3rd generation floor restoration, came in saying he works with stuff like this all the time, and he could take care of it.

When I asked him yesterday if this is the kind of work he'd want on his website his response was that he wouldn't choose to do work like this, wouldn't have restored this floor, and would have laid oak over the top of the whole thing.

I'd ask him about the toner, but if he gives pushback on it, just find another refinisher that is familiar with such products ... no point in undoing what's done when a top coat can fix it.