uscpsycho. I haven't re-read this entire post to understand who did your floors. I am in SoCal, and had a reputable flooring store install my engineered hardwood. I wanted the floorboards close enough to the wall so as not to need quarter round, but I planned for tall baseboard. They assigned their "A-team" to do my install since I was obviously a picky person, and they did a great job. But at least here, where people leave their doors open and no one runs a humidifier or de-humidifier, you have to plan for a certain amount of floor movement. Had I asked them for floors like yours butted up against the wall, no way in h*** would they have installed them like that. They are professionals and would not risk the unhappy outcome. What did you specifiy for your installers? Are they licensed, etc? Where are you located? Hardwood requires humidity/de-humidity and environmental controls. What you're asking is kind of an after-the-fact question. Do you want your floors corrected to be installed according to industry standards and best practices? I would. p.s. I'm not a pro. SJ Mcarthy, etc, please take over the responses now.

@chicagoans You are quite fortunate to have @SJ McCarthy commenting on your thread here. This is a well-known expert on flooring finishes here in the Houzz forums. If your floor is already done, then it's too late, but if you still have time, please push for the Bona finish. As mentioned above, many of these finishes turn yellow over time. Bona's waterborne finishes are some of the best on market to avoid this. As your title mentions, you are "saying good bye to old yeller . . . " but could actually be replacing your finish with one that will once again yellow for you over time. It really sounds like you don't want the hassle of dealing with the contractor, but we're just trying to spare you heartache on down the road. I had a similar instance in a recent flooring job where I wanted a product I had researched would be best, the floor guys said I didn't need it, and now I have a huge problem on my hands because their promises were useless, and I have a lot of staining going on. You're the one who has to live with this floor, not them, so they just want the easiest way out and possibly the most economical products so their job margains may be higher.

Darker is BETTER. Like in sewing seams on a garment, it is better to do DARKER with the tread than it is lighter. Jacobean stain has been used successfully to remove the red from red oak. If don't properly, the Jacobean stain (like water popped treads) will come VERY close to the tone/colour or the DARKER stripe in the feature wall. To keep the country theme, you can have the RISERS painted WHITE. The WHITE will help the Jacobean 'pull off' this change. A small bit of separation from the floor colour, the tread colour and the feature wall colour is all that is needed to FOOL the eye into thinking everything is tone on tone on tone. Water pop + Jacobean stain + ONE COAT of finish. Remember: the FINISH is what will add more yellow/orange (oil based or oil modified poly) or NOT (water based poly....like Bona Mega One or Traffic or Traffic HD). Find out the FINISH for the treads. You will be picking blind if you do not have a coat of finish over the stain.

We saw a home with tile on the stairs a few years ago. I was impressed by how durable is seemed since I imagined how badly our dog would scratch wooden steps. I wish I’d paid a bit more attention to the details but I seem to remember that they used something like a bullnosed tile at the edges and had a partial wall all the way up.. possibly because they had to hide the tile edges/ sides. I also imagine the wood support would need reinforcement so it doesn’t move/ crack and the tile you use would need to be nonslip.