I hired a young carpenter to make some pine cabinet doors for the kitchen of my circa 1950s cabin, sand and refinish some counter and floor areas in the kitchen, and cover a couple of areas of unfinished interior walls with pine because the wood was waterstained and looked unsightly.

I very foolishly failed to tell him that I wanted the new pine additions to approximate the color of the existing pine in the kitchen. Given the nature of the project as I'd explained it to him, which was principally to make things look better -- I assumed he'd know that. My error.

And then I went on a trip.

Before I returned, he did the work, and finishing all the new and newly-sanded pine with a wipe-on polyurethane. Since the rest of the pine in the room is up to 60 years old, the new wood looks glaringly pale.

I really want to bring the new work closer to the color of the surrounding wood. So my question is this: does it all need to be sanded down and then stained and refinished, or is this something that could be a good project for something like Polyshade, in the hands of an experienced finish carpenter? I know a lot of people have had bad results with Polyshade, but I'm hoping this may be one of those times when using Polyshade is a good compromise, since, as you can see from the attached photos, this is such a casual place.

Here is a link that might be useful: white pine additions to kitchen