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New wood/old wood... will the new wood blend with old in 6-8 mont

15 years ago

Help!

Just had my 100 year old floor refinished (sanded and stained). One area needed repair 4-5 boards. The new wood is noticeably different. If it wasn't for a piece that was cut abnormally shorter than the rest of the floor AND it has a distinctive grain pattern and color from the boards adjacent, I could live with otherwise slight mismatch.

The wood floor guy says that the new wood will change color and blend with the old wood in 6-8 months. Is this true?

Also, he could have used wood from the closet to replace the wood and put the new wood in the closet to be less conspicuous. He offers to do this now (spot repair) and split the cost of materials (charging me $500 for correcting the mistake and having to re-stain the entire floor with one additional coat). Shouldn't he have to pay for this? I am worried that the spot repair will cause the a blending issue with the stain, although the closet wood should match perfectly.

Final issue is that this repair was done due to the wood turning black from repeated dog urination. He sands away the black, but the stain seems to bring the black back up in small spots. I fear the black will continue to progress like it did to begin with.

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Comments (3)

organic_nick
15 years ago
Cost of what materials ? the boards he is taking up from your closet .The floor will amber has time goes by , But blending with the new floor it depends on a few things .
Did you ask him to ude product from the closet ?
He should replace the bad board for free , Better yet he should have never installed it . Once the wood has urine in it , I remove it and install a new one .
glennsfc
15 years ago
Very difficult to match new to old, but it can be done. $500 for materials to recoat the floor after the spot repair can be a realistic figure if what is being applioed is an expensive finish and the area is large. However, in my opinion, most spot repairs can be done without having to recoat the entire floor; done that successfully many times.

Did one floor with horrible dog urine damage where the customer agreed to give it a go without board replacements. I applied the dark stain and the urine stains appeared as much darker areas. The result was not up to my standards, but she was pleased with the result.
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Billl
15 years ago
It is pretty easy to get a decent match on older wood - if you are willing to pay! There are numerous companies that specialize in reclaimed lumber. They would be able to match you up with some planks from the same time period and mill them to match yours. We just did that with heart pine in a 1912 house. It is not cheap though. Lumber, milling, installation/weaving, sanding and finishing came in over $25/sq ft. Fortunately it was just a few small patches.

If you are just trying to make a new board look "old" - good luck. Modern lumber just isn't going to have the same look as the old growth trees they were logging 100 years ago. If you can swap out some boards from a closet for "free" that is a better option.

As for the costs, ripping up 2 sections and repairing them obviously will cost more than just 1 section.

For the urine damaged areas - whose idea was it to just sand? If you asked him to do it to save some money on repairs and now don't like the look, expect to pay to have it fixed. If you left it up to the contractor as to which boards to replace and which to salvage and he just did a poor job, then he should stand by his work and fix it.

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