I am coming to the end of a (very) long project. The LR floors were refinished in May of 2022 and have been covered since then. The baseboards are recessed, flush base which matches the floor. It's all red oak, stained in Dark Walnut, satin topcoat.

We could not do recessed base around the fireplace because it is stuccoed masonry, so the plan was to just have the floor and fireplace abut each other, but there is enough of an irregular gap that it just doesn't look good.

So my carpenter fabricated two pieces of trim that are almost like an extended shoe mold out of a piece of baseboard stock that fit around the bottom of the fireplace and line up perfectly with the soapstone hearth.

He stained them and the topcoat is Bona Satin.

The floor is that brown, gold highlighted, almost black grained finish that says "dark walnut" to me, and the baseboards match, even though they were fabricated and stained at different times, and the floor is 50+ years old and the base is newer wood.

The narrow trim pieces are Maroon. On the one hand you see about 10 inches of this trim on each side of the front of the fireplace, while the side is in shadow. On the other hand they are Maroon.

The carpenter has offered to strip the pieces and do them over for free.

I sent him a picture and he said he thinks they should be redone. I am halfway thinking they don't bother me that much but on the other hand, there they are.

Before he redoes them, if he redoes them...I was wondering if anybody had any insight as to why these particular pieces would be a completely different color when done. When first stained I thought they were fine. When I saw the finish coat dried I knew it was off even though they were sitting where they were stained.

Any thoughts on why this would happen?

The floor is not super clean in this picture, sorry. And the floor is an old floor with some character, it's not perfect.