stair treads and risers

[Bruce Cohen]

both of these are unfinished products. the alexandia moulding product is a 1/16" laminated oak product with a core that is various types of wood, but not plywood. the retrotread product by young manufacturing appears to be solid oak. the alexandria product includes an oak veneered riser overlay where i would need to provide a riser overlay for the retrotread product. as the risers are definately going to be painted, the oak riser is of little interest to me.

any first hand experiences would be appreciated.

Many thanks for the links, I live on the other side of the river from you, in one of those townhouses where almost room is on its own floor (I really hate climbing stairs after 30 years). Anyway, the stairs are floating and are wrapped in carpeting. The stringers are painted to match the walls (white) but we had oak hand rails, newel posts and balusters installed about 10 years ago. Looked good with new carpet, but now the carpet sucks and I really want to do something about the stairs. The treads are some crappy looking pine and to have them replaced with oak (way too many treads and way too litle money, you just found me the way to go.
I am going to wait until the holidays are over and check into it.
Thanks and have a Happy Holiday,
Bruce

[JimD]

You might want to consider shimming whatever you use on top of the treads to even out the rise heights as much as possible. When I am not tired and paying attention I deal with differentials well but if I am tired or not thinking about what I am doing, I sometimes trip even when the heights are the pretty close to the same. Old stairs with differing rise heights seem to make things worse. I would write down each rise and then play around with options to see what is possible. A cove moulding under each tread will allow you some flexibility in the thickness of the tread.

I also put the same 3/8 flooring on the upstairs hallway when I did my stairs. It had worn out carpeting prior to that. So I didn't really affect my rise heights. I checked them and they were pretty close to constant.

Jim

[Bruce Cohen]

Hey Jim, Thanks for the quick response, being that I have "floating" stairs, just what do I do about the bottom of the tread??

Bruce

[toolguy1000]

thanks to all for the comments and suggeations. looks like we'll be going with the 5/8" sold material product. it will make future finishings less of an issue, shouldn't dent as easily as the laminated product and at 5/8" rather than the 3/4" of the laminated product, will create less of an issue regarding riser heights. if it comes out as well as i hope, i'll post pictures at conclusion. if it doesn't turn out well, i'll just pretend i never opened this thread.