I've been in a lot of show homes lately. Often they have a beautiful laminate or engineered wood floor. And then you get to the stairs, and you can't just lay the engineered wood on the stair, because the cut edge isn't pretty. So they've got a plastic edge on every stair to cover the edge of the flooring material. IMHO, it's like a flashing light that screams "this is not real wood flooring!" And it ruins the effect of the overall floor. But they do it in show homes, so apparently I'm alone in noticing that. On the other hand, I've been in a lot of builder show homes lately that obviously needed to hire a designer. The expensive part of wood on stairs is the edge of each tread. It needs to be shaped and finished. The painted riser is just an effect, less wood look, highlights the wood tread.

Every house has its issues and only you know how much specific problems will bother you. If the newly installed wood is of the same species and grade, stain mismatch shouldn't be a problem. Different boards will take the stain differently and that will occur in both the new floor and the existing floor. A bit of color variation is part of the beauty of real hardwood floors. If you have the whole floor sanded, you can go with a slightly darker color but stick to a classic medium brown shade and it won't ever go out of style. New engineered flooring isn't going to be as durable as your floor with a good quality finish. Flooring manufacturers tout their multiple coats of finish applied in a factory environment as something that can't be duplicated in an on-site job. True, but that isn't all positive - scratches, dings and dents happen on site and factory finish has to be replaced, not repaired. Rather than replacing the existing, consider spending a bit more money and doing a high end finish. You might want to investigate the newer UV cured coating systems that are marketed as comparable to prefinished products. When my hubby was curious about off color stained wood, I asked him how much the slightly mismatched stain color in our current house bothered him. He hadn't even noticed it and it's been there close to ten years since I removed the carpet exposing the original finish hardwood.

We replaced the baseboards in our bedroom last fall when we got new carpet - went from stained oak (33 years old) to white. Eventually I want to redo the whole house, but since I'm doing it myself, I'll do one room at a time (and the bedroom was practice for the public spaces). I will probably have a period of time where the upstairs and downstairs don't match (I also live in a split foyer), but I can live with that.

Interior trim or exterior trim? It may also help to post drawings of the design and what the trim is like. WARNING: Posting your entire floor plan opens you up to facts you may not want to know, but should. Be prepared for suggestions that will make for a better design. Keep a thick skin, open mind, sense of humor, and a glass of wine within arms reach. You may not enjoy it, but everyone else will and you will be better off in the long run if you heed well the advice.