What type of flooring do you have? oak??

Yes- Oak.

Stairs*** refinished. Unable to edit original post.

Here’s a pic at the start of the project

Here’s what the stairs look like now.

And here’s the stain look we were going for -

I can see woodgrain on the picture. Looks pretty much like kona stain color. If you wanted something more like your inspiration picture, you should have picked a shade lighter stain. It does look very nice, even though, it isnt what you wanted. Good luck with trying to keep them looking clean though, since dark flooring shows every tiny spot of dust and dirt.

The floor at the top of the stairs looks right (same as the inspiration photo). The stair itself (the one that has the stain on it) looks painted. The photo is unclear as to whether or not they got all the old poly off the stairs (it is tricky to get all of it off). The other thing to be aware of: stairs are USUALLY Red Oak. Many people have white oak for their actual flooring.

White Oak and Red Oak take stains a LITTLE differently. Red Oak has a tendency to show a snick darker than white oak. It is hard to tell, without being there, whether or not your colour difference is because of failure to break through the poly vs red oak treads taking on a darker finish.

As for the inspiration photo, please take these photos with a grain of salt. The lighting used for the photo would have been EXTREMELY bright. They have to do this just to make the INFINITESIMAL amount of grain that pokes through to show up in a photo. Notice how ALL the lights are on in the photo (serious amounts of pot lighting)? They would have also used photo diffusers as well just to get enough 'life' in the floor to show up.

Personally I am seeing the grain at the top of the stairs. That's about as good as Kona will get. The stair treads themselves I'm not sure about. What I am sure about is the stairs look STUNNING!!!!!

I wouldn't touch them unless you are 100% sure they will get a hint lighter. And a 'hint' is all you will get with Kona.

What does it mean that he 'broke' the poly? Did he do a full multi step sanding process down to raw wood, or did he abrade the top surface of the poly?

I doubt he did multi step. He used a sander to sand down a bit of the poly. One pass, then stain.

The other, bigger issue than the stain looking like paint is that there are blotches/ areas of different sheen everywhere.

"One pass then stain"....oops. Sounds like the poly was left on the floor. The stain is probably sitting on top of the original finish. That's a no-no for staining wood.

Thanks everyone.

Not sure I trust this contractor to “start all over” if he’s telling that everything looks fine.

Send him extensive photos of the splotchiness of the finish. Explain to him that you are not happy with this look and that you have it on good authority that the polyurethane may NOT have been completely removed.

You would like to work towards a solution for this issue and that otherwise you are quite happy with the rest of the project. You would be really like to have this one issue dealt with because of the quality of the rest of the work.

The other thing is, you will want to wait a few days to see if the splotchiness has to do with different areas curing at different rates. Go ahead and take more photos (same time of day, same angle) to see if it improves or not.

Thanks SJ. This contractor came in to do the stairs only. Rest of the home was handled by other contractor(s).

Then pay someone else to do it. Your not happy with the work, he did the finish incorrectly and it WILL fail in short order. If he is paid in full and you don't want him back then the next move is totally up to you.

Not seeing the comment I added so here it is again, hope it doesn't duplicate:

It seems as though he didn't sand enough. My oak stairs were sanded when my maple floors were sanded. My oak seems much lighter than yours when sanded.

Here is the after with Jacobean stain, you can still see the grain.

Paid $1000 so far. He is owed $500 balance.

Not an expert here , but i did couple staining for my house small projects and i used kona staib for my coffee table and it was very dark then it got darker over time almost looked black but still i could see some wood grain. After a year I sanded back and overdo it with walnut stain. Your picture that you wanted looks more of a mixed one to me . More walnuty subtle ash on kona maybe? More walnut less kona ratio

He basically gel stained it. That is a thing. Not a great thing for stairs. But it’s a thing.

OK, so this person ONLY worked on the stairs. So that tells me the person who did the FLOORING is doing a great job...but the stair stainer is not.

Who hired this subcontractor? The person who hired the subcontractor is the one who DEALS with the subcontractor. If the GC did it, then the GC gets involved. If the homeowner hired the subcontractor (ie. the Homeowner BECAME the GC) then the homeowner is responsible for the quality of the subcontractor.

By the sounds of it, the subcontractor only 'roughed up' the poly on the stairs to give it 'teeth'. Then s/he applied stain/gel stain over the tread in the hopes that it would be 'good enough'.

You (or the GC...whomsoever hired this person) will need to do a sit down with this person to get to the bottom of the situation. It would be STUPID easy to figure this out. An off-cut of RAW wood (the same species that is on the treads) can be coated with the same stain that was used on the stairs. Then it can dry. If they look IDENTICAL then the treads were sanded down to raw wood. If it looks DIFFERENT then you know you have an issue with what the subcontractor is saying versus what he/she actually DID (ie. subcontractor is falsifying his/her work/methods).

A photo of the CAN of stain/product which was used would also clear this up very quickly.