Abma, The risers have to be a different species that will not expand and contract as much as the treads so I had to have poplar riser and stringers which of course meant they needed to be painted or would look funny. My custom stair guy will not make solid Brazilian Cherry stairs along with a few other woods. Hickory is 1820 on the Janka scale while oak is 1360. My BC on the other hand is 2350. Poplar is very low at 520. I would ask your customer stair contractor what he thinks. We have the Sharp 24" KB-6024MS Drawer and love the microwave and location. Not sure what you are talking about with a "Flip down door" I hope your build goes well. It can be a long and tiring process.

chris8796, thanks for posting that information. My problem is that I have all wood in the main level and the stairs are all oak so there wouldn't be anything added to the treads, but the problem comes in at the top of the steps as you would now step onto new wood floors so the drop between the second floor hall to the first step would be too high. Then the drop from the last step on the main level is too short. I then have a similar problem with the stairs going from the wood floor main level down to the daylight finished basement - again all oak stair case in which the drop from the main floor to the first downstairs step would be too great. Also I'm having the basement flooring changed to engineered wood and the would cause a problem in the last step as you stepped on to the basement floor. It was just easier to keep carpeting. I wish I knew when I was building the house that I wanted all wood stairs and floors, then I wouldn't have this problem now. I also wish I'd realized that they were using all oak - when I had asked for all maple he told me that since we were covering it with carpet not to worry. The other thing is the people doing my floors insist that if I did all wood floors that I had to have at least carpet or safety treads added - not a look I wanted.

Paintguy on the paint forum told me to score the painters tape too so I'll be doing that after everything cures. I'll have to check tonight and see if it's dirt. I knew the dark treads would show dust but and I thought a little bit about shoe prints but ... oh my, I hope I'm not regretting this later. Although, we really don't wear shoes in the house so it shouldn't be too huge of a problem. I can always add a runner later if I hate the footprint thing. Lots of other people in the word have dark stair treads so what do they do? Clean all the time? :)

I have no idea if I’m in the right place to ask this question, but if I am not someone please point me in the right direction. We are finally getting to the staircases in our house after an extensive remodel project. We hired a staircase company to do the work. Last week they installed the treads. They are dark walnut stained white oak to match hardwood floors of the same. In fact the staircase owner/installer was in touch with the flooring company’s owner because I asked him to contact them about the water pop & stain color ect. Since I have never re-done a staircase before or had any experience with wood parts I’m not sure what I should be expecting for the final result. At this point I am very disappointed & would like to ask the staircase people to re-finish the treads. Actually I would like treads that are better matched during the manufacturing process. But I don’t know if that’s unreasonable or if that should be a given & I have a problem here. I have posted some photos. The first photos are the front staircase. My complaints are what looks like crud on the treads from what I believe was the water pop. I don’t think they sanded them after. If you compare the landings which were done by the flooring company back when the floors were installed the landings are smooth -ignore the scratches from the dogs in the pics. Then you look at the treads & it’s all bumpy. Obviously you can feel the difference with your hand as well. The one tread with the large amount of black crud on it it down right ugly. Then my second complaint is the mis-matched strips of wood that make up the treads. I don’t know if they could be stained closer or if it’s poor matching during manufacturer as in they bought & are using cheap treads.I have marked the pics. We have engineered Acacia in the bonus room & this is the staircase that goes to it. There was no water pop back here but again I think the treads have poorly matched pieces. The one step (4) looks positively like it has stripes on it. Please give me your opinion of both the front & back treads & what options I have open to me at this point. Ok apparently there’s a 4 picture limit. So here’s the bare minimum to see what I’ve got here. Tell me if I am expecting too much.