I recently went through this carpet->wood on stairs conversion myself. We had 17 stairs + a landing and an extra step up to the landing. I used pre-finished 5" maple planks (engineered) on the treads to match the wood in the rest of the house. We bought pre-finished nosing for each step ($$$). For the risers I used 1/2" birch plywood painted white (nice contrast with the dark wood). Overall, I'm happy with the end result. However, it wasn't easy and took a long time. 1) it's a lot of work, and, if you don't put some thought and time into it, it will show 2) Walls and stairs are rarely straight, perpendicular, parallel, or aligned in any direction to make this job easier. Each and every cut will be unique 3) Our staircase has a stringer on each side - no balusters to worry about, but that doubles the number of unique cuts to make 4) pre-finished nosing is expensive. Our steps are 42" wide. The nosing comes in 78" sticks. I didn't want a splice in the nosing, so that meant one stick for every stair 5) After we started, I found some places online that sell one piece treads. I'm not sure that it would have been cheaper than fitting multiple planks on each step, but it would probably be a lot less cutting. 6) with 17 steps, the less trips down to the saw and up to test the fit on the top step the better. Of course the top stairs are probably going to be the ones hardest to get right I found the hardwoodflooringtalk website to be very useful during our entire install. There are several guides and a busy message forum. I recommend you (or DH) spend some time browsing it before starting. Unfortunately THS won't let me post a link to them here, but a google search for "hardwood flooring talk" should get you there. Good luck!

Just checking on the cherry. Can't say I'm too fond of oak myself. There are few instances where balustrade removal and replacement work out too well unless you're disassembling the stair re-milling and reassembling it. Even then unless you are talking about a stair that's made out of a rare or exotic lumber that would exceed the cost of the time and labor of doing so It is not often the best practice. I would still use care taking it apart and use it to make something else. How solid are the newels, are they loose surface mount or do they go into the floor? Iron is nice. You can either use a metal rail or wood on top of it. For a long while iron/steel balusters were a bit less expensive than wood but now they are comparable. The wood rail will usually be less expensive than the metal and easier to install. Newel posts can be either as wood newels match the iron quite well. A few of the things I was mentioning about not being correct in the drawings were the balusters and newels. The newel is an Arcways product whose turning is sized for the 30" rail heights of days long gone by. Note the extremely tall base. The balusters are StaiParts Inc. made for the same. The upper turnings don't even come close to matching the rake of the stair which is common for too many stair part manufacturers. Even with the stair and balcony rail set to the highest height in order to use a closer matching baluster combination to make it less noticeable. Arcways however does have some fabulous rails and fittings, checks their small orders for matching, offers cherry as a stock item and will sell directly to homeowners. They also carry iron and steel balusters. I believe OakPoint sells direct and Crown sells through Brosco/Brockway Smith, 84 Lumber and even a few Lowe's locations as well as numerous stair companies. Use the dealer locator on their website. Both have a good selection, have cherry as stock on some of their profiles, good quality and a product line that looks correct for todays codes. "Solid" or one piece treads sound nice but they are not really what you want unless they have relief milling on the underside and even then it's not much of a guarantee against checking or cupping especially if they are only 3/4 thick". How will the 1 1/4"+ overhang hold up? Construction adhesive and a finish nail through the top of the finish isn't going to last too long and will squeak like crazy after a while. A typical tread is 1 1/16" thick and will be made of three to 5 pieces. Cherry treads are most often made "in house" from random width/length material and a good stair shop will cut out any sap wood, match the grain and the leading piece will be well beyond the riser. Engineered treads are also available but like everything they have their pros and cons and I think the cons still outweigh the pros. The open left end should have a return nosing mitered into the front left corner and extend past the next riser by the same distance as the overhang with a scotia below. That is the dark piece I am showing on the edge of the tread in the image above. If you go through your phone book or search for stair companies or stair manufacturers and not stair part manufacturers you should find a few. If you call a stair parts manufacturer they will direct you to someone in your area that they sell to. I was looking for the dimension of the face of riser to face of riser or the run. I'm assuming 7" is the height? Floor to floor height. From the top of the plywood where the upper stair lands to the top of the vinyl on the landing and from the top of the vinyl on the landing to the top of the vinyl(?) in the basement. If the vinyl is flat I would agree with keeping it in place if the glue has failed and it's lifting remove it and in either scenario use a quality felt paper underlayment. Did you already place the order with the millwork shop? How soon do you need to get this done? I really think it would be in your best interest to explore all avenues and plan out the whole project before you buy anything. As Casey noted above it is often cheaper to remove all and replace. It would take you less time to install the two units than it would to even do one single tread.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when houses have different hardwood, especially when the two floors meet/touch. Weedy acres pic looks good, that wouldn't bother me... I just remember walking thru homes seeing real hardwood and then it's touching laminate wood or other hardwood, drives me nuts. You have two levels so maybe it's not a big deal and weedys pic proves that different wood on stairs doesn't look bad. If i We're you i Would put your wood of choice on the stairs and upstairs. Maybe someday down the road you'll rip out the main level and match it...

I’m hoping that it’s not going to be too difficult to find the skill and expertise needed to prepare the treads. We’re in the greater Indianapolis area. Is this a unique enough project (preparing stair treads by matching stain and replicating hand scraped texture) that we might struggle to find someone? Quick Google searches suggest to me that many species of wood treads can be purchased online, including treads with various degrees of distressing, but I’d prefer to work more locally so we can see what we’re getting. I’m pretty sure the flooring store, which has a very good reputation locally, will be qualified to do the installation. I need to get back in touch with my contact at the flooring store for thoughts. I might also reach out the man who custom built our kitchen cabinets to see if this is the type of carpentry work he might do (he did a beautiful job on our cabinets).