graywings, I am so confused, because you praise Dyson, but want a Back pack vacuum. Then purchase a Miele stick vac. The Miele would have been fine, with the right configuration, but bags would be costly if you have a lot of dog hair. geguy - I seldom talk about my personal life on these forums, but since you asked . . . My vacuuming machine needs have changed. I have lived in three different houses and an apartment in the years I have posted here (and in one of them I had a central vac which I adored). The Dyson upright is wonderful for large carpet areas. I still love it - I borrowed it back to clean the house of an elderly woman recently, cleaning behind and under furniture that had not been moved in 40 years. I lost count of the number of times I emptied the canister. Right now, I live in a small 2-story house with hardwood floors and area rugs and lots of nooks and crannies where dog fur settles. The Dyson upright is too large to move around this house. Even the smaller, more mobile Dyson canister bugs the heck out of me, getting caught in door thresholds and not adequately cleaning the rugs. I want a small, highly mobile machine for the hardwood floors, which I believe I have found in a Pro-Team Super Half-Vac HEPA Hipster. Unfortunely, I was just informed that it won't be available until Spring. I went to a vac store to buy a belt for a Hoover Windtunnel (someone else's vac) and saw the Miele stick vac and bought it on impulse. The Miele would not have worked for me - even the rep at Miele said that it's designed to pick up dirt, not dog fur. Besides that, its center of balance is too high on the shaft, resulting in the full 15 pounds of the machine being carried by your arm as you use it. So I'm back to my plan of waiting for the Pro-Team, and I may buy a lightweight upright for the area rugs. Unfortunately for me, both will be bagged machines, but that's the compromise I have to make. Getting on my soapbox for a minute, this is why I argue with the the Kirby guys when they swing by this forum and try to say that the Kirby is the best machine out there. There is more to selecting a vacuum than cleaning power. The machine has to work in the specific home and it has to work for the user.

I purchased this model last year. I am not clean freak but this vacuum is a pleasure to use. When you stop the brushes the suction part of the cleaner continues to run so yes you will still have suction. The telescoping wand is handy. You can adjust it up and out or down while using it. Adjust it up and out to reach up the stair steps, collapse it down a bit in tight corners. I have the 236 brush and like it because it does have the aggressive brushes and it is adjustable. I have different types of area rugs throughout the house Berber, Indian and thicker Asian orientals which are all wool, as well as nylon type carpets and the brush does well on all of them. If I don't want as much "action" out of the head I just raise it up. This brush moves about 90 degrees in each directly so you can actually slide it sideways while using---direct it to the left or right without picking it up--while you stand in one spot. I don't use it on my wood floors..instead I use the parquet brush which slides across the floors very gently while picking up dust as well as sucking up larger particles. I use this tool on my hardwood floors, hardwood stairs, and my tile floor in the kitchen. The Miele web site states that the S5 series is made and tested in Germany but does not state where the other models are made. I also think the warranty on these is longer than the other series. The discharge air coming out of the unit smells completely clean and fresh. There are also optional tools you can buy. I have the micro set which lets me clean small items like computer keyboards, AC vents, and hard to reach areas. All in all it is a great machine - this coming from someone who is no fan of cleaning, but somehow I don't mind slithering around with this thing.

Thanks for clarifying the sanding blocks. I thought they were pine also, mainly because of the knots, but lots of people kept saying throwing the word plywood around. Although neither is really desirable for this. The first photo I posted is the basement door at the bottom. The 2nd two photos were during the process when the house was built. I posted them to show the steps underneath. The basement door will be open most of the time once finished and I had wanted to run the basement flooring (pergo) in that landing butting into the stairs. The white spindles were actually oak and I ended up painting them. (I didn't think out the stairs real well) IRL, I don't think they look real grainy. Also, that odd piece of trim along the stairs will come off and the wall will be drywalled right. I know you can only put so much lip stick on a pig but I think I'll probably take the plunge. If it does look bad I believe a runner could help it out until we could replace the treads and railings/newel. It won't be for awhile but I'll post an update if I follow through.

ecf1216: Adding to what Kas said, here are my follow-up suggestions and responses. With all that floor space, a bagged upright will mostly work for you, but the good ones tend to be heavy and some can be awkward to maneuver for getting under beds and furniture, and moving around corners. With that long-fibered carpet, you absolutely want adjustable height functions. You will want to set the height as high as it will go to avoiding beating up that rug. Fortunately, a lot of uprights have that kind of adjustability. The advantage of a beater brush/agitator for pile carpeting is that the brush helps lift and groom the carpeting while assuring that your vac is sucking as much dust and etc. from down deep. (Supposedly, they will pull from the pad up thorugh the pile.) For me, though, the uprights would be a pain for vacuuming the stairs and hauling them up and downstairs. Also, the beater brush that makes uprights good for carpeting can make them a pain for bare hardwood areas. The spinning brish tends to scatter as much as it collects from the bare floor. The more expensive (and more capable) uprights from the likes of Miele, Riccar, Sebo, etc. allow you to switch off the brush and that can help a lot. With a canister vac and the amount of carpeting you have, I would go for one of the models with a "power head." Those have adjustable brush heights and do as good a job on pile carpets as uprights. Personally, I find the power-head style with a canister vac to be easier for me to adjust and maneuver around and under furniture. I also find them noticeably quieter than the uprights. You can switch off the brush in the canister type vacs' powerheads, too, but if I had as much bare floor space you do, I might be inclined to get a vac which includes one of the so-called "parquet tools" heads, or buy one as an add-on. The Miele ones that I'm most familiar with are the SBB300 and the even larger SBB400 model. They have larger swaths than standard tools and have brush bristles around the base which sweep and collect well and won't cause concerns about scratching or marring. They increase the pickup area so you can make 13" or wider swaths. Riccar has just come out with an even better version than Miele's. I'm not sure, but I think you can mix and match it with other lines. The Riccar one that I saw is a new product which was included with their new "Butler" small/portable vac but I think the tool will be sold separately. For stairs and hauling the vacs around, the canisters have a handle that makes them easy to lift (like picking up a lunch box. The canisters are not very heavy . At least, I don't think they are heavy. My Miele "compact" C2 canister -- is a slightly unpdated version of Kas's S2 model and also bright red --- weighs around 10 or 11 pounds. A bit above hand vacs but much less than most uprights. Far easier for me to haul up and down stairs. Easily held in one hand while hold while vacuuming the stair steps with the other. (FWIW, the hose on many canisters will be long enough to reach a long ways up the stairs while leaving the vac at the bottom or the top.) The bigger Miele canisters, which are the C1 and C3 models, ) are slightly heavier as are, IIRC, the power-head equipped Ricars and Panasonic/Kenomore canister models. Within a product line, such as the C2 canister models, the various models designations represent different mixes of tools and attachments. I find it easy to hold the Miele canister in one hand and the hose in the other as I go up the stairs. Without hose extensions, I can reach about 2/3 of the way up my stairs with just the hose. Previously, I was using a hose with a hose extension and wands from my upright Hoover Wind Tunnel. That worked okay on my bare-wood stairs. but could have been a royal pain with carpeted stairs. The downside for getting canister vacs with powered wands/tools is that the power wands and hoses are an additional and not insubstantial expense. All of these vacs have very good and excellent cleaning power. Indeed, like Kas and Cpartist, some owners report using regular floor tools on low-pile carpeting with good results. For myself, I've find that my Miele's tools for bare floors tend to suck down onto my wool rugs which makes it harder to push and pull across the rug. You have a long handled duster for the high ceilings and stairwell ceilings? I had wand and hose extensions for my Hoover upright. These worked but it was a hassle to get the vac steadied and to position the wands to get high enough that that I resorted to fabricating an extension for a Swiffer. With my Miele, I can combine the adjustable wand length and the long crevice tool (which came with my particular model) and reach up with one hand while holding the canister with the other. For me, this cleans better and less awkwardly than my previous kludged solutions for my stairwell's ceilings. To be sure, this is a YMMV thing. No doubt that the Miele, Riccar/Simplicity, Sebo, etc. are expensive. Panasonic canister models (which include the canister models that Sears sells as Kenmores) are a good deal less expensive, though not cheap by any means. I checked out the Kenmore versions and wound up with concerns about durability and longevity. I have no doubt that some folks get 10 or more years of use from theirs, but there seem to be a lot of folks who don't get more than a couple of years. The biggest weakness seems to be the durability of the connections through hose and wands for power heads.