The front room has a series of three windows positioned next to each other. Here are the new windows with the new interior trim:
Notice that two long pieces of trim (the top casing and the apron on the bottom) are unfinished wood. As soon as I saw that I knew that staining and finishing those boards was not going to give a match.
The factory-finished trim boards have a very thin coating of color and a clear sealant. Wood stain applied by a human from a can using a rag is a different type of thing. So I was immediately skeptical that the color of the stain and degree of shininess of the polyurethane could be matched.
I had to be at work on the final day of installation when the interior trim was finished. This is what I was greeted with when I returned home:
Wow. And it is just stain on wood (no polyurethane sealant).
Note: And in case you are wondering, yes that is an unusually large gap of about an inch-and-a-half between the paint line at the edge of the old interior trim (and the paper of the drywall that was torn) and the new trim. The old trim was the same width as the new trim. All the windows are like this. The discrepancy is because these new insert windows are smaller than the old insert windows and because the trim seems to be positioned to cover more of the frame.
I walked into my house the evening of that final day expecting mismatched stain. But I didn’t expect what else I saw in that room:
I cannot even image what went on in that room. As least I had not started remodeling the inside of my house. And I was able to get the stain off the floor.
