we just installed rift and quartered white oak throughout the house and finished with waterlox. the floors are spectacular. the linear grain of the WO is soft, yet varied, and the flecking of the quartersawn adds tremendous depth and beauty. Waterlox actually warms the none of the wood without imparting any noticeable color, and you can, if you like, add a little oil based stain to the first coat to add a little tint if you like. the WO has none of the agitation of face sawn RO, and feels much finer and older somehow. I live in LA, where red oak is common, and these floors are more beautiful than anything else around. so yummy you could sleep on them.

Too funny! I'm in Vancouver as well and just finishing my white uppers, rift cut oak lowers, kitchen. Similar vintage house. We have new white oak quarter/rift floors everywhere on the main floor, but went with a darker ceramic floor tile in the kitchen. The oak of the lowers works well with the oak floors in the adjacent dining room. I think the darker tile floor works to break things up a little, in a good way. The counters are madreperola quartzite, with a taupe that picks up the tones of the wood, and greens that pick up the tones of the kitchen floor. Plain white subway backsplash that closely matches the white uppers. Overall, really happy. Hopefully I'll be posting pics in the next week or two. Having seen it, I can reassure you that the combo of white uppers and white oak lowers is gorgeous. You'll love it.

look at older homes, they were done w/2" and 3" . this is 3 and 1/4. (so your 3" will be 1/4" narrower) 3 1/4" seems to be very common size. I don't know where he's getting his material, but you may want to look elsewhere. Baird Brothers, 4 1/4" White Oak select. He can't get them? man, just look online. those sizes are available all over the place.

Did they put a stain on the new section to try to make it match the old section? And did they refinish the wood floors in the old section at the same time, or just finish the new flooring? I am far from an expert in flooring, but it almost looks the there is a difference in stain or type of finish rather than a difference that is based on how the the boards are sawn. When we bought our house 5 years ago, it came with 60 year old red oak in our living and dining rooms that looks very similar in color to your old section. In two separate renovations since then, we replaced the floor in two adjacent rooms to match. In both cases, there is far less color difference than you see in yours. In the first case of our family room, it was a dead on match and you would never be able to tell at first glance from the color that the family room and living room were installed 60 years apart. In the second case, our new kitchen floor ended up being just a hair lighter than the existing floor, but it’s a pretty subtle difference that might be exaggerated by a bit of an optical illusion due to chance — the doorway where the kitchen and dining room meet ended up with the new section having a couple of the lightest boards butt up against a a couple of the darkest boards from the old section. In your case, I’d be tempted to get a second opinion from a flooring contractor to see if there is anything that could be done stain or finish-wise to better make the woods match, or if it is really a difference in the character of the wood, or the way the boards were sawn. EDIT: Added photos to give you a sense of how close the matches in our house are. First photo is living room/family room, other two are the kitchen.