I usually fall UP the steps, which is very hard on your pretty little shins.... Now I have a carpeted stair story. There was an elegant elderly couple in my childhood neighborhood; he a judge, she a portrait painter; both of them very tall, with excellent carriage, and adorable personalities. One day, she was upstairs putting on her hat to go to a luncheon with her garden club, and she saw a crib mattress that her daughter was coming to pick up later in the day. So to get it down the stairs most efficiently, she positioned it at the top of the stairs, sat down on it, and rode it down the stairs, in her crepe afternoon dress and her white gloves and her flowered hat. At that moment, the taxi driver arrived at the front door, which was of course open except for the screen door. Just as he raised his hand to knock on the door, his perfectly proper passenger came sailing across the front hall on the baby mattress. Without a word of explanation, she stood up, settled her skirts, said "Good morning!" and went right out the door. I can only imagine the expression on his face.

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.

handymac's description is an excellent one. The key to remember is that it's the top and bottom stairs that are the potential bugaboos. If they are equal to start with, then any increase/decrease in tread thickness (like his 2" --> 1 1/4") will make the top stair shorter/taller by that difference, and the bottom stair taller/shorter by that difference. (Hope I didn't totally confuse you.) So if your new material is 1/2" thicker than the old material, the top step is 1/2" less than it was and the bottom step is 1/2" more. Now they're an inch different from each other, which doesn't meet code. But if you change your flooring on the bottom floor or top floor, those will impact it as well. The other thing to keep in mind is that your stairs may or may not be constructed as handymac describes. Our carpeted stairs actually had 1x pine treads. So that's 3/4" thick + 1/2" carpet = 1 1/4" total. Swapping out to oak treads had no impact on the rise between stairs. Or your existing stairs may have a top (or bottom) stair that has more or less rise than the rest of them. So the change in tread may still keep them within the code-required tolerance. The best way to know the answer is to remove the carpet and see what you've got, and measure each riser. Listen to what he said about gaskets or rosin paper. We didn't do that on ours and chased squeaks for quite a while.

Lots of negative waves here! :) We did a lot of thinking and measuring before we jumped in on the project. The above you issues you have all mentioned were big concerns of mine as well, but a lot of details fell in to place. I ended up ordering oak stair treads that were made to order. 1/2 thick on the main tread, return on front and both sides at 1.5" tall (to wrap existing tread), with a 1.5" return extending past the tread. They look very nice and appear to be constructed well. Prior to install, they will get stained and sealed when we get our hardwood floors refinished in a couple of weeks. Regarding liability and code, all of that has been taken in to account and they will actually be better than the original build. On the staircase, the first step from the top, just happened to have a higher rise by 1/2" than all of the other stairs, and the bottom step happened to have 1/2" less than all of the other treads, so after the retrofit they be more in code and consistent throughout the staircase than they were before the retrofit. After removing and numbering all of the spindles, we were able to take out the threaded shaft in the bottoms, cut 1/2" shorter and reinstall a wooden dowel back in its place which will fit in to the drilled holes on the tread. We made up a plumb bob with a dowel rod that fits in to the hole on the underside of the railing. When plugged in, it will give us area to drill the hole for the spindle. There is enough play on the top end of the spindle in to the railing that we will be able to raise them enough to install the tread, lower the spindle base dowel in to the hole, and then secure with a brad nailer. So far so good. Our floor refinishing got put off for a couple of weeks as prior to doing the floors, we had a contractor remove all of our popcorn ceilings in our vaulted living room, kitchen, dining room, mud room, and hallway. That should be removed and painted by within the next two weeks, and the floors are scheduled for Oct 18th. In the interim, I have dry fit all of the treads and numbered them for the steps. Many of them needed some light sanding on the inside of the side returns to properly fit over the exterior trim piece we installed on the sides of the staircase. We will be now be dry fitting, plumb bob, and drill the holes for the spindles so that once the steps are stained, we can do the final install.