I’m about to redo the wood floors in my house. The living room has 6” or so wide planks and parquet. The dining room has 3.25” wide tongue and groove planks. My mom grew up in this house and said both rooms are red oak. Some of the wood in the dining room was damaged so I bought two bundles of red oak t&g from lumber liquidators.

I sanded boards from the living room (left in photo), dining room (middle), and lumber liquidators (right). I then applied stain (Waterlox Truetone) to all three to decide which color I wanted. The old dining room board turned out MUCH darker than the other two, I thought maybe because it had been water damaged. So, I (lightly) sanded an undamaged portion of the dining room floor and applied some stain. It was also a lot darker (should match the stain in the middle of the other boards).

Do I need to just sand the wood in the dining room down a lot further? It almost doesn’t even look like the same type of wood? Please let me know what you guys think as I’d like the two room floor colors to match. Thanks for your help!

To me, it looks like you have a different specie than red oak.
It looks like beech, or maple to me.
Old floors can have more old growth wood that have close growth rings and usually turn out darker. New flooring with growth rings that are farther apart will not accept as much of the stain. Red oak has a dramatic grain pattern.
If you sand more of your old flooring and dampen the surface with water or paint thinner it will show the grain pattern better. The natural color and grain pattern ought to prove the specie better .

Actually, after talking about the different way it took the stain with Mom, she finally said that room may have been birch or maple instead of red oak.

I found a picture of a birch countertop stained with Truetone, and to me the way it colored the rings and the wood between the rings looked just like the small area I had stained. But clearly I’m no expert.

I planned to do the dining room later anyway, so I suppose I have some time to think about color/stain differences. What worries me is there is more 3.25” t&g in a hallway connected to the living room. I definitely don’t want that difference in color between those two. I might have to use the red oak I planned to use to patch the dining room to replace the planks in the hallway, and use those planks to repair the stuff in the dining room?

This is going to setback the project, which is disappointing but seems to always happen. How hard is it to tear up planks like that carefully enough to re-use them? Think they are nailed in at an angle through the t&g. Thanks to anyone who replies!

Removing some flooring for patching will entail a lot of work and wasted wood flooring. To get flooring from a room you will need to find the last rows that were installed. Usually the last row is a ripped row so destroying some pieces it to get to the good flooring is usually what happens. Finding the top-nails and setting them through the flooring with an eighth inch punch is the way to begin. Once the row is taken out the good wood can be removed without damage. Usually the closet will have enough for a patch.
If you already have a board of your flooring removed I would search for a local supplier to get the correct material. Putting the wrong specie in after patching another area doesn't make sense.

Good eye Pete! I went ahead and pulled up the flooring in the hallway and on the back of the wood was a sticker that said Prime Beech. It definitely looks like the same wood as the dining room so I plan to use the reclaimed wood in there to replace damaged boards. I may use a pre-stain conditioner and see what the TrueTone stain looks like, or use plain old Waterlox. Either way I’ve got some time to figure that out.

The new issue is the red oak I’m putting in. I bought a (cheap) floor nail gun from Harbor Freight because it had good reviews (Banks 2-in-1). I’ve only driving about 5 cleats with it, but 2 of those didn’t countersink... I turned the PSI up to 100 (supposed to be 90 max) after the first failed cleat, but had the second failed sink after that.

Tomorrow when I start I plan to hit the mallet on the gun harder. Other than that, is there anything I can do? Really hoping it goes well as I was hoping to start sanding by Saturday.

Once the job is organized things happen quickly. I would check to see if your new flooring has the same moisture content as your existing flooring. You can compare the moisture content of each with an inexpensive moisture meter from Harbor Freight. Some say it is not too accurate, but you will be able to see if the new wood is close to the old wood, no matter what the moisture value is. Oak and beech are similar.
This will assure that the new flooring will not cup or shrink too much. You ought to have the same value when you start sanding to get the best outcome.

I’ve actually pulled up the beech from the hallway and will use it to replace the beech in the dining room.

I’m replacing the beech in the hallway with the red oak that I was going to use to replace the damaged boards in the dining room (back when I thought the dining room was red oak).