Tara, I am not a flooring person either but was given the same info by my flooring guy. I just put down a QS oak floor which included three stairs. I think the original treads were pine. My floor guy said not to mess with it that he would stain it to match floor. Well I'm not too crazy about how it turned out. My trim Carpenter said he could cover it with oak but the floor guy said it should have been done before floor was laid. I wish now I would have just replaced them.

Lots of wood is as hard as teak and it can be difficult to work with. I would not put down plastic - I use felt (tarpaper) and it works well. You can use any gun that will get the nail thru - just adjust the setting right and try a few shots before you put the floor in. I use an old fashioned kind of thing where you just pound it hard with a mallet - works well enough on Brazillian cherry, bloodwood, mesquite, and various other woods that are also hard. You pre-drill the first planks and use a flooring nail to secure, after which you can use the gun. You bought pre-finished flooring, so if you have never done this, take a couple of the warped pieces that you are going to have to scrap anyway and use them for experimenting. Nail a couple to the middle of the floor where you can easily rip them out. See what kind of difficulty you may have. And if you are going to nail thru the tongue, definitely pre-drill and then slightly ream the hole and then use a nail set to make sure that the nail head sinks properly, otherwise you will have a gap. If you do not do this, you can split off the tongue. Try one of your sample boards w and w/out pre-drilling to understand what I mean. Always make your mistakes where they won't hurt you later. One problem w some of the hardwoods is that they can split and splinter more easily than you might think, so be aware of that or your hands can get shredded. Also, get a good new saw blade. Where you cut the boards, you do not want any chipping, so slow and accurate is the rule and you get nicer edges. Also, don't expect everything to be a perfect 90 degree cut, even on the boards you buy. I have never found the edges to be perfect. Since I'm a little fanatical, I make them perfect. Make sure you have a good router too - you may want to route the ends. Some people don't but I do where they lock into the border, unless you are not putting in a border and then you can simply run them into the wall. Good luck.

clg - That's the one place online I found that had the double rounded first step in cumaru! I'm worried about the matching of the wood, and the quality. I didn't see any online reviews of the company. Do you (or anyone) have any experience with them? Mairin - Funny - I've been following your progress (and lusting after your potential countertops!) as we seem to have a similar style. I can't wait to see your pictures! Please share when you can! We considered iron balusters too, but a stairman mentioned that our stair area is rather small and they may not look good there. That lead us to wood. Raehelen - wow - your registers look great! You'd never know it's not the same wood. My concern is that the step is 5" wide so if it's a little off, there's a lot of space to notice it. (And I'm not sure if my floor guy is as good as yours!) We've already contracted for all wood stairs, including risers, the "catch" is it was presented as "in your choice of any wood we carry". We didn't realize they didn't carry the steps we need in all the flooring woods. We could try and take the stairs out of the contract price, but I really have the same issue either way. Even if I order the stair parts on line myself, and have someone else install (I'm a diy'er, but more on the painting level!) I'm still unsure the floor would match the stairs. My biggest issue is the first step. This step is right inside the front door - literally 6 feet from the door, so it's really visible. There are railings in both the kitchen and the stairway that need to match, but I am a little more comfortable trying to stain a different wood to match those. Has anyone done all wood steps in a different wood and tried to match the stain?

Here I am! Thanks so much for following up with me, especially since you should just be gazing blissfully at your beautiful stairs! We are now waffling between Brazilian Teak and Amendiom (slightly lighter color) but we have the stair issue either way. It is great to see that the railing matches so well. One downer for me is that my stairs are enclosed on the sides so no matter what type of railing I use (the exotic or oak stained to match) they won't look as nice as yours. Congrats on finishing one more step (no pun intended!) I can't wait to see an updated kitchen picture too.