Really? Maple and oak? I LOVE maple...... My husband used to work for a wood flooring company and his old boss also suggested hickory, but the pictures we saw on the web were VERY busy. We are definitely going for a more uniform, light, calm look... I'll check out quartersawn, and bring some maple samples home to look at with the oak. We may just end up doing oak in there, too, for simplicity. Although DH won't be happy about adding 300 sf to his floor refinishing project: he was hoping for pre-finished in that area (but that would look different than what we have elsewhere, so if we're doing oak, I would imagine it should be the exact same, huh?)

Did you paint your railing? I like that look and we are looking for pointers as we are hoping to do ours!!

please take a damp rag and go over one of the patches that has dark next to light tones and retake a photo during the day with light shining across the area so we can see if there is still gunk/finish left on the floor. So -- fir is a conifer, like pine, the wood is very soft, it makes incredibly beautiful flooring, actually my favorite straight grain look, but not as durable as hardwood which includes cherry, oak, maple (these are the most common in US). If the floor is 100 years old it may be very worn down to the point where if the refinisher sands any further, he may hit the tongue of the flooring so cannot safely sand any more. In Pittsburg, over 100 years of snow tramped in over soft fir may have left you with floors that cannot practically be re-sanded. It may be no fault of the person doing the work. A good refinisher would have measured down at several points between the boards to the tongue before he started to give you a fair expectation. I had one house that had been refinished by the prior owner, he sanded down too much, and put a poor quality home depot poly on. This finish was useless within 2 years. I did refinish the oak at that point, but my refinisher made it clear that the floor had run out of "lives" and this would be its last refinish. In my first house (a nasty fixer) a prior owner had a large dog who had urinated in the house so may time that the stains could not be removed. The refinisher offered staining the entire floor as a solution. This eradicated the odor, but I had never wanted dark stained floors. C'est la vie. I think your floors may have run out of lives. A solution may be to apply a stain, but this would need to be done by a skilled hand to even out the tones. Another solution is new flooring. I learned later on that removing old flooring and replacing with pre-finished would some times be the less expensive option than site finishing an old floor. In any case, I hope it turns out beautifully. Pittsburg has amazing old homes and now that certain tech companies have relocated there the money to restore them is available. That is a great thing for the city.

Wow. Those are VERY handsome floors. I see a bit of cinnamon rather than 'pink'. Most wood floors fade a snick over time. The exposure to UV light will reduce the orange/reddish tones. You might get 1/4 step 'less pink'. Trying to get red oak to stay light(er) like this AND stay away from the pink/cinnamon tones is very difficult. I would have required a special mixture from your refinisher. It requires a green-based stain (such as Jacobean) to be mixed in with the stain you wanted. And that's when things get tricky. Your professional would have had to offer different mixes like 50:50 Jacobean:Early American or 25:75 Jacobean:Early American. That special mixing is not easy. And it isn't guaranteed to do what you were hoping for. Personally I say leave it. It is a stunning floor. It really is. It looks like you wanted to keep it lighter yet get rid of the pink. I would say you have accomplished what you set out to do. And BTW: you will need to see the floor in all 5 light settings (early morning; mid-morning; afternoon; evening; night) to see how this floor changes throughout the day. A floor in this tone is going to have 2-3 different presentations. I'm going to bet it will show very brown once the natural light goes away (evening/night) and artificial lights get turned on. Give it 6 months before hating it. It is a very nice floor. It will grow on you very very quickly.