Hello everyone. Sounds like i finally found the right place to address my inquiries.
I recently hired someone to refinish the wood floors in my house. The carpet had been pulled up in the living room so i new that the wood was in good shape. However, when the vinyl flooring and plywood was pulled up in the adjoining dining room and hallway the wood had been water logged and rotted. I then had the contractor pull out the old, rotted wood in the dining room and hallway and have him install new maple in that area. He staggered the new flooring into the dinging room to try to make the change seemless.
Once the old flooring in the dining room had been sanded down it appeared to be a bit darker than the new maple floors in the dining room and hallway. My house is 60 years old and i assume the floors are original. I hope the guy didn't misdiagnos my original wood. The original wood was grades 2 and 3. There are a lot of knots and quite a bit of grain variation. For this reason I got him to get grade 2 maple for the replacement wood in the dining room and hallway. The grade 2 maple is, of course darker than the grade 1 and therefore will hopefully blend better with the old wood.
I actually had another prospective contractor claim that he thought it was pecan. The contractor I hired had said, prior to sanding it down, that he thought it was maple.

Irregardless, i now need to match the old and new wood with a stain. Are there any tricks i can mention to the guy would will be doing the finishing of the floors? I assume i will have to go dark but i have also heard that maple doens't take dark stains very well. As it tends to get splotchy and spread unevenly.


thanks for any help.