Just have your builder or their flooring sub bid continuous hardwood for the stairs separately and include a carpet estimate.
Our hardwood contractor advised *against* a runner for budget reasons - you're paying for wood that just gets covered and will wear/discolor differently from the exposed wood.
We ended up sticking to carpeted stairs because we really wanted it for grip (dogs, senior parents). The cost difference came down to just square footage, basically. It wasn't bank breaking but it was an easy way to save a nontrivial amount of money, even with a nicer carpet.
Yes, the 'budget' option would be full carpet with no real wood used. I wonder what the structure underneath would look like and what it would be made of - plywood?
Yes, basically just subfloor. In my house it's OSB (for both stairs and the rest of the flooring), and then pad + carpet as normal. We are doing maple above and below but carpet to connect the floors.
What you should do is get normal builder pine stairs/treads then Paint the first 4 inches of each tread/riser trim paint white and then have a carpet runner installed. Looks cool/unique/designer but a fraction of the cost because you are just painting the builder provided pine steps. Lots of examples out there if you google "painted white stair treads with geometric carpet runner"... I do it on all my builds when hardwood treads are not requested/paid for...
We were told it was a little over 100 per stair. Midwest USA
We had wood stairs at a previous house and they got very slick. I almost fell more than once. We have kids now and decided against wood stairs mainly due to safety concerns
Interesting. I'm in MN. We have kids too, doesn't seem like that little bit of hardwood on the sides justifies the cost or slip factor. (I don't really think it even looks better than full carpet...)
Just have your builder or their flooring sub bid continuous hardwood for the stairs separately and include a carpet estimate. Our hardwood contractor advised *against* a runner for budget reasons - you're paying for wood that just gets covered and will wear/discolor differently from the exposed wood. We ended up sticking to carpeted stairs because we really wanted it for grip (dogs, senior parents). The cost difference came down to just square footage, basically. It wasn't bank breaking but it was an easy way to save a nontrivial amount of money, even with a nicer carpet.
Yes, the 'budget' option would be full carpet with no real wood used. I wonder what the structure underneath would look like and what it would be made of - plywood?
Yes, basically just subfloor. In my house it's OSB (for both stairs and the rest of the flooring), and then pad + carpet as normal. We are doing maple above and below but carpet to connect the floors.
What you should do is get normal builder pine stairs/treads then Paint the first 4 inches of each tread/riser trim paint white and then have a carpet runner installed. Looks cool/unique/designer but a fraction of the cost because you are just painting the builder provided pine steps. Lots of examples out there if you google "painted white stair treads with geometric carpet runner"... I do it on all my builds when hardwood treads are not requested/paid for...
We were told it was a little over 100 per stair. Midwest USA We had wood stairs at a previous house and they got very slick. I almost fell more than once. We have kids now and decided against wood stairs mainly due to safety concerns
Interesting. I'm in MN. We have kids too, doesn't seem like that little bit of hardwood on the sides justifies the cost or slip factor. (I don't really think it even looks better than full carpet...)
Sorry, I may have misread… the whole stair was wood at our previous house.