Thanks for the info. about your estimates. We understand that buying wood flooring online is not for everyone even though if using common sense and in-depth researches, it can save quite some for similar quality products found locally. By the way, you have done a great job noticing the confusing facts in wood flooring business. Now let's talk about you 2 flooring quotes: Acacia Walnut is from Asia and has a 2300 janka rating. It has similar grain patterns to American walnut which is 1010 in Janka rating. It is one of the few hot colored and inexpensive wood floorings on market now. We stock the solid moldings for the floor. But for vents, treads and risers, we would prefer to use unfinished American walnut and then stain match the Acacia color. So if you decide to go with the first quote, you may consider to have your installer do the same for your 30 stairs. The cost for unfinished walnut should be quite some more than Oak, but still affordable. $60 installation per step is fair to us. The second quote with Walnut is still fair to me. $7.41/sqft RW walnut is a reasonable price with a 3mm wear layer. $4.33 to install RW flooring is not too much either in this business. It is also about right to install a prefinished Walnut tread and white riser at $190. So to conclude, a lot of it has to do with sourcing and the type of business you are dealing with.

I've read in some places that you should NEVER use more than one coat of stain on hardwood floors, while other places state that you can use multiple coats to achieve the color you want. So I'm confused - which is correct? The reason I ask is that the floor company we are using stated that they didn't think the results of using the initial coat of stain was very good (we didn't like the look of the ebony Minwax sample provided due to not being dark enough, so used another brand). Once applied, it still wasn't as dark as I'd hoped, but I still thought it was better than the Minwax. Anyway, the guy recommended using the Mixwax over the other stain, so we went with that. The color is now what we want, however, once they started putting the poly on, there were issues. We can live with some of the issues (such as some areas being slightly lighter - we're not expecting perfection, especially with dark floors), but there are other issues that appear unrelated to the stain. For example, after approx. the third coat of poly (Bona Traffic), we noticed huge scratches along the floor in one room, then noticed some in another. The company is acting as if we must have done it (yes, I wanted to screw up my new floor, so I went and scraped something across the entire room!), and still insist it goes back to the original stain before they used the Minwax. However, we've now realized that the scratch in one room corresponds to a fairly deep scratch that was there BEFORE they sanded (this room had existing wood that was being refinished), but for some reason, it wasn't noticeable until the final coat of poly. Is it possible that this is actually more related to the initial floor preparation - such as not getting the original scratches completely sanded out, but they just weren't noticeable until the end? We're extremely frustrated since it's been almost 2 weeks of dealing with this now and the company continues to act as if it's either 1) the non-Minwax stain or 2) we did something to cause the scratches. Too bad we don't have a photo of the scratch on the floor BEFORE starting all this, since then it would be very apparent that it's the SAME scratch, at least in one room - I think that's the issue in the other as well (the other room had new unfinished wood, so any scratches weren't so apparent before sanding and finishing). Thanks for any input or insight into this!

You can continue the same wood should you choose. Probably the biggest kille of wood in a bathroom is if the toilet bowl condenses, sweats and drips in the summer, or during periods of high humidity. More common in older homes or homes with no air conditioning. If you want dark wood, you can do that as well. FWIW, I have brazilian cherry in my master bedroom and bathroom. Throughout my whole house, actually. Dark wood. Looks great with no damage after 20 years. If you go with two different woods you can use a wood saddle to make the transition at the door. Or even a stone saddle. Perhaps use the same stone as your bathroom countertop if the countertop will be stone. If you use the same wood, if the strips run through the doorway a good installer can stitch the floors together, although it'd be easier to use a wood saddle at the transition. If they run parallel you can abut them with ease for a continuous look from one room into the next.

I would definitely do hardwood in the upstairs hallway or other open spaces and carpet in the bedrooms. I, jmho, don't think the floors have to match since you can't see inside a bedroom from the first floor (usually). I don't think the bedroom carpets have to be the same, either; I had two teenage daughters at one time and always let them choose (within reason, lol) their bedroom decor. In this house, with no one but us here, the carpet is the same in all rooms upstairs. I didn't use any hardwood upstairs because, as others have said, cost and noise. So far the Flooring Police have not shown up to haul me off. My stairs runner does not match the second floor carpet. I'm having the stairs remnant bound into a round area rug for my snug tv/reading room which is directly to one side of the bottom of the stairs. The first and second floors both got all new flooring at the same time, about 3 years ago. Oh, I just realized I'm really in trouble! Hardwood on the first floor except for the carpet in the two bedrooms.