DIYbanter - View Single Post

wrote:
I have an older home, built in the 30's, that has hardwood flooring in
the living room. The floor was previously stained quite dark, and had
big scratches. Additionally, I removed a floor furnace and it left a
large hole in the floor along the wall by the entrance to the kitchen.

I hired a refinisher to come in and do the following: repair/fill the
hole then sand and coat the entire living room floor with polyeurethane
to natural color (that was his suggestion).

He did a great job except for one thing. The wood he used to repair
the hole where the furnace used to be is quite a bit lighter than the
existing wood. As in, the original wood is almost an orangish-red and
the new wood is nearly white.

He indicates that the new wood will yellow with age (or darken), but I
have my doubts. It seems to me that the new wood should more closely
match the existing wood RIGHT FROM DAY ONE. Am I off base here?
Should I pay him the balance for his work, or should I demand that he
replace the new lighter wood with something closer in color? Thanks!

Well, I'll chime in with my personal experience. Our house was built
in the 1920's, and has the original oak floor. Before refinishing, a
few spots had to be repaired with new wood. Rather than put the new
wood in in highly noticeable spots, old wood flooring was taken from
the back of a closet to do the repairs in a hallway, and new wood was
put in to replace the "stolen" wood from the back of the closet. Even
after sanding (rather deeply I might add to take out deep scratches),
the old wood was still darker than the new wood. I assume this is
because the sunlight darkening the wood goes rather deep.

We had a similar situation in our old house too. A couple strips of
oak flooring needed to be replaced, and the floor guy brought a few
strips of old wood that he had taken out of another house on another
job, because he said that new wood would never match the existing old
wood floor.

So In your case, I would say do one of two things:
1.) Just wait (perhaps years) until the lighter wood darkens.
2.) See if you have a place where you can take up enough of the old
floor somewhere, and put that in place of the existing patch, and then
of course refinsh that section of floor again.

Ken