We have been crazy busy this last week removing all the steel studs, furnace and two 50 gal water heaters from the basement to make ready for the new concrete floor so sorry I am just now getting back to here. We just finished late yesterday and we are both really sore from all that manual labor getting everything out. The company that will be putting in the concrete started at 7 a.m. this morning welding the iron that will hold the corrugated steel sheets that will hold the 4" concrete floor. When they are done with that, we will spend the next three days laying in the vapor barrier to cover the dirt and we also have to put extensions on the two sump pits. Prior to this, we had to have the OSB flooring removed and about 1 foot X 2,200 square feet of expansive soil removed, new helical piers drilled, the second sump pit installed and new perimeter trenches dug and new french drains and rock put in so this has been a horrific costly project. We have done any and all work we can do ourselves to defray costs. Thank you all for so much helpful advice...I appreciate all of it!! We did check into having tubes put into the concrete to carry heated water to heat the floors but about 80% of the floor will be carpeted and we have been told that heated floors would not be efficient with carpet. There may be some great pad to use under the carpet that provides more insulation too. There will be a tiled bath and a work/hobby room that we will put the heated mats under the tile. We may put in a high efficiency stove/fireplace in the future. I have been reading about all kinds of concrete sealers, one has tea tree oil in it which protects against mold and it seals against radon too so I think we will seal the concrete floors for an extra layer of security! We will also have this super heavy duty vapor barrier down on the soil. We live in Colorado so it can get very cold here and we also have radon issues. Back to the stair issue...I have received about 50 responses to the ad I put on Craig's List. One guy said he was experienced with stairs and it was probably a half day job and would be about $100 labor plus materials. That sounds really low but I plan to call each one back and screen them - or at least the ones who answered my ad in the way I asked them to - and the ones that look good I will have come look at the stairs and give me a bid. I realized that it doesn't make much sense to have them look at it until the concrete floor is in which will now be the second week of June.

The flooring store we purchased the products from recommended this: Apply sealer Sand (using 120 grit, no more than 150 grit sand paper) Apply 1st coat Duraseal Matte Oil based finish (available at San Jose location) Roll this on using a smooth roller Sand (again 120 or max 150 grit) Apply 2nd coat Duraseal Matte Oil based finish (roll on using smooth roller) Sand (again 120 or max 150 grit) (Optional) - 3rd coat of Duraseal & sanding Apply 1st Spray coat of Minwax Satin Lightly sand (again 120 or max 150 grit) Apply very light 2nd Spray coat of Minwax Satin ... however I don't know where to start if this doesn't turn out right, and I am not sure if the Minwax is a durable enough. Also, we applied the Minwax satin to the wood directly and it came out too dark. So.... I was looking for alternative products to try on my other scraps.

Most economical = carpet. After that, a solid finish (wood, cork, vinyl, tile, stone, etc) will require all the extras. Painted stairs will work...with plenty of elbow grease and with the FULL UNDERSTANDING the paint will wear/chip/"patina" inside of a few years. There are ways to lay a runner on the stairs and then trim out the edges of the tread/riser with wood-looking stuff. This will cut the cost in half of what I mention above. The other option is to place the runner and PAINT out the edges....creating a faux-painted-wood look which could be very handsome yet extremely practical. Notice how carpet keeps on coming up again and again? Yah. There's a reason for that. Those are builder grades stairs made for carpet.

If I’m understanding this correctly, the area between the two sets of stairs is this discontinued floor, the both sets of stairs are carpeted and the main living area (up the stairs) is also the discontinued flooring. Is this correct? If so, eliminate the discontinued flooring in between the two sets of stairs and replace it with whatever you choose to do for the stairs. You can keep the flooring upstairs as it is, but changing the floor at the entry to match the stairs will make it less disjointed and more intentional. Do not try to match it too hard or it will look just like you tried to match it. I would purposely contrast, but it needs to compliment. If you pull a color from the current floor, I would lean more toward light (although hard to tell, I can make out some very subtle light streaks). I would steer clear of the darker tones as dark floors tend to show everything and these sets of stairs happen to be an integral and unavoidable part of the house, which will make the high traffic very conspicuous on dark floors. I also suggest rugs!