Looking for some guidance on our reconstruction project. We had water damage that required removal of the wood flooring in this room. In the photo, the old floor is the more golden yellow on the far side of the space, the new flooring is the orange floor with more visible wood grain closer to us. The new flooring is white oak. The contractor believes the old floor (or most of it) is also white oak. It's unclear to me whether the old floor was stained or just sealed or how much it has yellowed over time; the house was build in 2002. Our contractor had a stain mixed for the floor (Minwax Performance Series in the shade MW453 Honeymeade) in an attempt to match the old, but he and my husband were concerned it was too brown compared to the existing floor when they sampled it, so the decision was made to just do a couple coats of a water-based polyurethane. This is after 1 coat. The poly pulled a lot of red/orange out of the oak. In daylight the difference in color between the old and new floors is noticeable but not horrible, but under full overhead lighting it looks like this. The contractor has agreed to sand it all back down and try again with a new stain, but I'm feeling anxious about this now. The quality of the poly application was also not great - pooling in places, hairs and dust (or is it bubbles?) in the finish all over. Any recommendations on how to get the result I'm looking for?

Edited to add - If we get the new floors to a closer match with a different stain color, will the a clear poly on top of that change the color further? Also, is there enough red in this oak that green stain would be needed to tone that down at some point in the process? I've already talked to my contractor about creating samples on spare boards, so we can play around, but I hate to spend money on a quart of green if I don't need to.