Looking for advice on whether to cap stairs or use half inch engineered flooring on stairs. The engineered flooring has a thin veneer on top. It will be used as flooring throughout the rest of the house. If anyone can speak from personal experience even better.

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.

It probably makes no difference structurally. It might be easier to use plywood in that it comes in different thicknesses so it would be easier to achieve the correct height of each riser.

We had a similar woe in our build. In our case it was changed by the structural engineer to adjust for something and the change on the plans was never shared with us the homeowners. So we had a set of plans that said one thing and then a different thing was built. Ultimately we are fine with the need for it but we felt duped because the plans didn’t reflect the change. In your case the plans clearly show a difference. If this was a concern then it should have been caught in design and changed or discussed. In our case the change impacted our staircase railing design and options so we were further annoyed by it. What railing will you do? Does it have any impact?