We recently purchased a home that has old hardwood floors from the 1930s. they're in pretty good condition and are a parquet pattern for the most part. We decided to have the floor guy refinish the floors and also install hardwood floor in the kitchen so there was hardwood throughout the entire living space.

Here's the problem... Now that they've applied some stain it's apparent that the wood in the kitchen is not the same as the wood everywhere else. He is telling me that the wood in the kitchen is a white oak and the wood everywhere else is a red oak and that's why there's a color variation with the stain.

So my questions are:
1. Shouldn't he have known the type if wood? Now that it's installed and different are we just out of luck?

2. Any tips on matching stain?

3. Where is the liability here? I'm sure he's gonna try to charge me for the extra work. What's our recourse?

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Depends on who picked the material - if you asked for red oak and he installed white oak, then that's on him. Hopefully you have that in writing somewhere.

If you asked for "matching" floors, but didn't get samples or anything to see how it would look beforehand, that's also on him too - I always do a sample stain piece that the homeowner signs off on before providing stain or doing any stain work. Too easy to get burned by stain not being done properly or matching exactly the expectations of the customer. Saves a lot of headache if I can point to the signed sample and say "but you approved this color".

If nothing is in writing, then hopefully you can come to a compromise.

Thanks. We just have a quote saying he will install new floor in the kitchen. No mention of type of oak. We're new homeowners and found him through a recommendation from our realtor so hopefully he'll make good.