You don't like the floor installer because he made too many mistakes.

You don't like the proposed stair installer because he told you it would take three days and he was "pretty high".

What do you expect to learn here?

Not sure I'd install flooring on the stairs. I'd replace the stair threads with solid wood ones. Is that what your stair installer is doing? If so that would explain the price difference.

I didn't say I don't like the proposed installer. I actually like him a lot but his estimate sounds really high to me, and I found some data to support that.

What am I trying to learn? I'm trying to figure out if three days is excessive to install wood floors on one flight of stairs. In my post I asked "Should installing wood on one flight of stairs be a three day job?" I don't think that is too hard for someone with experience to provide insight.

Lyfia - I'm not totally sure what you're asking but let me clarify. The old flooring was already pulled off. The stairs and landing are already stripped to the plywood, all that's left is installation.

I'm having the same engineered hardwood floor that I have upstairs installed on the stairs.

Well, I would go to a couple local, reputable flooring retailers in your area who have been established for a long time and have a multitude of excellent reviews (on Yelp, specifically). Get a couple bids. They have a reputation to protect, and care about customer satisfaction. Tell them your situation. That's the only way you'll find out. You are probably in L.A. Price is going to depend on local market conditions. Personally, I prefer the local flooring store option.

Well generally flooring isn't installed on stairs. You use stair treads if you want wood there. Carpet is the exception.

I've seen it done once with flooring and it didn't look that great on the stairs as you normally don't have seams etc. on stair treads. They tend to be one piece. Google stair tread.

A lot of stairs have to be rebuilt to accommodate new flooring, because of the 3/8” rule. No rise can be more than 3/8” difference from the others. It is an out of code tripping hazard otherwise. That includes the bottom tread, and the landing at the top. Engineered wood and nosing caps is a poor choice for stairs. It splits and will have longevity issues. Solid wood is always the best choice.

Perhaps talk to the finish carpenter that you like and have him explain why he is expensive and takes 4 days. My guess would be that he’s altering the existing stringers to make it code compliant.

If you are selling the house ... But engineering floor and nosing will not work in the long term. I would replace with oak and mix up a stain to match your flooring.

I suggest installing the flooring yourself. You will most likely learn how easy it is to make mistakes and how cheap the other guy's quote was, or you will discover talents you never knew you had.

Follow manufacturer's instructions.

For diy--

Ahhhhh....Stairs and code. That's serious discussion. Without knowing all the measurements (floor heights, riser heights, existing variance between treads AND the top/bottom of the stairs AND the landing, we will only be guessing.

When it comes to stairs, there are more than 15 different codes that make up a set of stairs. And the finishing carpenter (the only professional who should be touching a set of stairs if there is a change of materials) are the most expensive boys/girls on the block. They bill out somewhere around the electrician/plumber range ($180/hr in high-end locations in Canada....that's more than a Family Physician's hourly rate in most of Canada!!!!! - who says you can't make money in the trades?).

As soon as a PROFESSIONAL touches your stairs, they MUST bring it "up" to code. If they don't they are responsible for any/all issues (injuries/death) that occur in the future. Again, that's why the big boys/girls of the building industry are really the only one's who should be touching a set of stairs.

If you are going "carpet to carpet" or "laminate to laminate" (assuming the laminates have the same thickness) then the issues are very limited and this is relatively easy. As soon as you move from carpet to solid surface (tile, stone, hardwood, laminate, vinyl, etc) you start running into 'code' issues.

Whew! And it is entirely possible that 3 days is the PERFECT amount of time....or it could be a horrible set up which your professional was unable to anticipate (internal structure leaves things a mess which s/he must clean up) and a 10 day week wouldn't be long enough.

We just can't say. But I would use the $150-180/hr as a base to start from and then work the math from there. It may not be entirely accurate for your area (are you in a very poor area of North America where the economy has been depressed since 2008 or earlier???) but it will give you a guide with which to work (the number I'm coming up with is just a snick over $4K).

Photos of your stairs and what USED to be there (and what used to be at the top and what used to be at the bottom) would certainly help us help you.

Some manufacturers of pre-finished flooring also offer matching stair treads. That would always be my first choice. And the person to install them should be a talented trim carpenter for both functional and aesthetic reasons.

Best wishes for a successful outcome.

Without knowing whether the stairs require any preparation or height adjustment it's hard to say whether three days is reasonable. Three days sounds high but the guy must set his price where he knows he will make money. If he does floors too, it's likely that he's seen someone else got the easy money, he's being called in to provide a higher skilled service, and he's not making a dime on the material.

"...13 stairs..." meaning treads or risers?

Your floor to floor height must be rather low...8 feet? 13 risers X 7.5" = 8' +/-

13 treads plus a landing = 15 risers. Use solid treads, they don't have to match the flooring. What are the rails and newel posts?

13 treads plus a landing = 14 risers

Virgil Carter Fine Art

"13 treads plus a landing = 14 risers"

I'd suggest consulting an architect, or an apprentice carpenter, drywall installer or even a painter....

Ahhh....I'm guessing you meant an "intermediate" landing. I was thinking of only the "top" landing at the second level.

Isn't the English language wonderful and so versatile...?

Neither of us knows what the OP actually meant.

Wow. Lots of info here. Much of it helpful and some of it not so relevant. Gotta love Houzz where asking a seemingly simple question (should one flight of stairs take three days) can generate so much info. And always snark.

I did not know about stair treads. I will contact the manufacturer and see if they make a matching tread for this flooring. According to the flooring page I linked to in my first post, they said most companies do not make matching treads but I will ask. They do make stair nosing and I already bought that. I don't love the idea of making treads from scratch and trying to make them match because it just sounds like a lot can go wrong.

I don't know why nobody brought this concept of treads to my attention at any previous point. Not any of the flooring stores I talked to or any of the pros I've discussed the stairs with. Not once did anyone say anything about treads. Not even the first flooring guy who actually cut the planks & nosing to size for the stairs.

Anyway, yes, there is an intermediate landing. Since someone asked, I attached photos of the current condition of the stairs. There are 14 risers but there are 13 left because the riser on the top step to the second floor was already installed. I don't have photos handy of the flooring that was there before but it was also engineered wood. I've been going up and down these steps in this condition for two years and they are fine. At no point has anyone said the stringers or anything else needed to be modified. I am sure someone here is going to say the stairs have to be torn out and rebuilt from scratch, because that's just the nature of Houzz, but they seem perfectly fine. Even the inspector hasn't said anything about stair modifications and he's been up and down the stairs plenty of times.

Hard to tell for sure but I'd guess that the bottom step is shorter due to floor installation downstairs. Codes here generally allow up to 1/8" variation from one step to the next.

The majority of products do not have an option to purchase matching treads. They likely weren't mentioned because they don't exist. Most of the time when one does treads, they're finished to match in a shop or on site. These are usually 1" thick and require a lot of work to make the heights work out.

Your inspector may not have said anything about the current treads but that doesn't preclude him from finding fault later, once someone covers them, and they don't meet code. An installer would be unwise not to meet required codes on a job where an inspector is likely to be present.

"Isn't the English language wonderful and so versatile...?"

Zoning ordinances come to mind.

@Mark and Virgil,

You guys need to get together and write a book! If nothing else, I'm confident the collaboration would be good for sales of alcoholic beverages. Might I suggest you start with some moonshine produced in our fair Commonwealth of Virginia?

I'll just tell you my experience and see if it helps you any. I have prefinished solid wood floor planks installed on my main level which I also wanted to install on the stairs. However, we couldn't figure out a way to make that look right. I have LVP in the basement and we couldn't figure out how to use that either. I ended up purchasing the oak treads with the attached bull nose, the matching trim, and the white risers that Lowe's sells.

We then had to cut every riser and tread a little different size to ensure a tight fit. I also remember needing some shims here and there. Then the treads had to be stained and the risers painted. It took my DH and I a week to finish. Albeit a lot of that time was waiting for things to dry as I put 3 coats of stain on the treads plus two coats of urethane.

My DH is a pretty good finish carpenter and knew what he was doing. As I remember, materials only was close to $1,200.00 and we have 18 steps. Hope this helps.

Since your stairs are already installed with rough materials, it's worth pointing out that their design and measurements were done with some specific finish tread thickness in mind so that all risers are consistent and within code height requirements including the final riser and the second floor finish material.

These installed rough dimensions and the assumption of the finish tread thickness by the framer will be critical for your selection of your finish treads For example, you can't select 5/8" thick treads if 3/4" was the framer's assumption, or vice versa. Or some other assumptions.

You are probably already aware of this, but if not proceed with all due diligence. Determine the required finish tread thickness and stick with it.

Same applies for thread depth.

Why couldn't you make the wood planks look right on your stairs?

The planks had a tongue and groove edge which we would have to cut off, sand, restain, etc. They were 4 1/2 inches wide, so we would have had to rip one down because the treads needed to be 11 1/2" wide. Also, we couldn't figure out how to create a bullnose.

You need to drop back and reassess with he help of a highly experienced finish carpenter. The materials are not optimal, and it looks like you're going to throw that out of code if you move forward. That's a safety hazard, even if it doesn't get red tagged. But likely the only reason the code guy hasn't said anything is that it was down to the sub, and wasn't a finished surface.

I started this thread to ask "Should installing wood on one flight of stairs be a three day job?" and things got interesting. The answer is an unequivocal yes (even though the website I linked to suggests otherwise). That would have been enough to satisfy my reason for starting this thread.

I've now met with three people and three days is the minimum, one guy said it could be as many as five days. So if anyone ever comes across this thread in the future who has a similar question, there is your answer. [UPDATE: See my post below, it can be done in one day.]

Sometimes I'll post a question that is more complicated and wish I'd get this much feedback. And sometimes I'll ask what I think is a simple question and get all sorts of unexpected input -- like happened here. You never know what you're going to get on Houzz but I always appreciate the people that take time to answer questions and offer help & suggestions!

I can't imagine three days and I am the source/author of the link above. However back in my installation days I probably saw 10-12 jobs a year that included planks on stairs work. It's based more on someone that has the experience to do so. Also one that can make nice clean fits against the risers without gobs of caulk I see often. This is speaking specifically prefinished and all prep work taken care ahead of time (4-5 hours or thereabouts for a straight run of 12 steps). It's simply a time for the material installation only.

Plank flooring on stairs (with matching nosing) was popular, still is, but depends on who may be selling the job, particularly flooring stores mentioned above. Today however I look at it differently or to the point I would not want it in my home, and I offer matching treads with all products sold.

Ken Fisher

Uptown Floors - formally Hardwood Installer .com

Forget what I just said. One day is what it took to do all my stairs and landing. Plus fix a number of other things that weren't done right (previous floor guy) on the upstairs floor. Two guys working for 10.5 hours including lunch break and cleanup.

These guys even fixed the height of the first step and adjusted all the other steps to make sure everything was within code. That's why I gave them the job, everyone else said we just have to hope the inspector doesn't decide to be a hard ass but they said it can and should be fixed.

To the person who was concerned about messy caulk, not a drop of caulk was used, their cuts were perfect.

I talked to this company after my last post, they originally said the job would take two days but they knocked it out in one. And they were also the cheapest despite doing a lot more work and needing a lot more materials to bring the stairs up to code.

I had my mind made up to hire someone else before these guys came to give me an estimate; they were my last appointment and I almost canceled it to get the job started but I'm glad I didn't! Patience and diligence paid off.

In most of the working world two guys working 10.5 hours is 21 person-hours or pretty darn close to three typical 7.5 hour working days. Seems as if your guy had it right.

None of the quotes were from people who were going to work alone. Maybe the guy who said 5 days was going to work alone, I'm not sure, but the others definitely not.

I don't know what part of the country you're in, but here in Los Angeles I haven't seen many tradespeople who worked a regular 8 hour day. And especially not if they are a couple hours away from finishing, they'd rather stay and get it done than come back the next day for a couple of hours.

But if you want to be right you can be right :-)

This is probably a question for a new thread but I'll post it here for the flooring expoerts who have been sharing their opinions on my stairs. A guy that does a lot of work at my house saw the installation and was worried about the midway landing. I didn't want a baseboard around the landing so they installed the planks tight to the walls (photo below). My guy was concerned that when the temperature changes the wood could expand and result in the adhesive/nails loosening which would cause the floor to creak on the landing.

He said it can be solved by trimming the planks around the walls and covering the gap with baseboard.

What do you guys think? Take his advice and create a gap for wood expansion or leave it as is?

Tenting is a very real possibility when no allowance for materials movement is created.

So would you create that gap now after the fact?

I'd rather prevent issues in the future and have a baseboard than have a creaky floor with no baseboards. Baseboard isn't the end of the world.

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.

My flooring was on-site for over a year before it was installed so it has fully acclimated.

These guys are licensed and have oodles of great reviews. I'm disappointed they just did what I asked them to do without warning me about the possible issues. Especially since I think the install would have been easier for them if they didn't have to make the edges line up perfectly with the walls. I'm impressed with how it looks, exactly how I wanted it to be. But I do not want issues down the road.

I wonder if the fact that this is a small landing rather than a full room has something to do with their not objecting? There is only one seam per row of planks so maybe fewer places to have an issue? I would really like to understand myself.

Unless you changed, my recollection is that you were using engineered wood on the steps. I think it's rather unlikely that a 3' or so wide mid-landing is going to grow so much that it would lift the plank from the subfloor.

Agreed

Issues of expansion and contraction aside (I agree it will be minimal for engineered flooring,) how are you planning to prevent mechanical damage to the wall (from brooms, vacuums, shoes, kids toys, etc.) at the floor wall intersection?

Johnson - Correct, it is engineered hardwood planks but the landing is 7' wide. Can a midway landing be only 3' wide? The stairs would have to be awfully narrow. I must be misunderstanding or you made a typo.

Anyway, at 7' wide and one seam per row, it sounds like the pros do not think I'm going to have any issues. If any pros disagree, please chime in.

Charles - What I am planning to do to prevent mechanical damage is to not do any mechanical damage. I understand that without baseboards I run the risk of damaged walls around the perimeter. But it is a small area with a low probability of damage so I hope I can get away with it. If I start to see noticeable damage I will either make repairs or put in baseboards and that decision will be based on how long I go before it seems necessary.

Seriously? The mid-landing has TWO dimensions. I'm guessing one of those is pretty close to 3 feet. Wood expands mostly in width when it adds moisture. Engineered wood acts differently since it's cross laminated for stability, but boards subjected to moisture still grow more in width than in length, so it's the width of the landing I'm referring to, not the length, which is obviously more than 3 feet.

Oh! LOL

I assumed we were talking about the width of the landing. Probably because that is the dimension where the planks are squeezed between drywall on two sides. That's how I understood the problem, that the wood planks would expand length-wise and press against the drywall on the left and right sides.

If you are talking about the other dimension that is 3.5 feet deep. But in that direction the planks are only close to the drywall on the back side side. On the front side they aren't pressed tight to anything. So doesn't that minimize the possibility of the planks tee-peeing?