I must admit, choosing the species of hardwood was actually quite difficult for us. If you haven’t had the luxury of walking into a hardwood store (or looking online for that matter), you’ll quickly discover that there are thousands of options to choose from. For us, we wanted something that was strong, aesthetically pleasing and cost effective.

We were pretty sure we wanted a solid wood that would be finished on-site instead of a pre-finished product, although there was certainly some debate about it. The pre-finished products are usually stronger than their counterparts, but you have to like the particular finish options (which we didn’t). The pre-finished material was obviously more expensive, but the installation costs were cheaper… so comparatively, it was pretty much a wash.

From an aesthetic standpoint, we considered walnut… however it’s neither strong nor cost effective, so we abandoned it pretty quickly. We looked at bamboo as well, which is both strong and sustainable, but neither of us like the look of it. We also considered maple, which is very strong but has a pretty plain grain pattern. We were also warned a few times that maple doesn’t stain particularly well because of its density. It’s obviously workable, but you have to accept the imperfections that may result.

In the end, we went with a 3 1/4” quarter sawn white oak, which was installed on-site and stained a darkish “cappuccino” brown. On the Janka hardness scale, white oak is a 1360, which puts it more or less in the middle of the pack when it comes to general strength.

Quarter sawn refers to the way the material is cut, in which the logs are first cut into quarters before being cut into individual boards. The main benefits being a 50% increase of stability against warping and an improved grain aesthetic (in my opinion at least). From what I understand, this method doesn’t produce any more waste than plain sawing although it’s more labour intensive, which obviously adds to the cost.

I suppose I could have come up with a slightly less cliched headline, but whatever… our stairs were installed yesterday and I’m pretty excited.

We went with white oak for the treads, which will eventually be stained a dark brown (at least that’s the game plan at the moment). My wife and I had contemplated walnut as we both love the woodgrain and colour, but the cost difference was far too great to really justify it. Walnut is also a softer hardwood (how’s that for an oxymoron?), which we weren’t particularly fond of either.

The railing was originally going to be metal and glass, but we feared the result would be too “cold” and unfriendly… so we went with wood and glass instead. The plan was to have zero spindles, but we couldn’t get a single piece of glass long enough. So we’ll have at least one spindle that’ll be used solely to hide the seam between glass panels. The glass itself will be inset into a grove that runs along the top of the stringer and the bottom of the railing… which should allow us to avoid any glass-mounting hardware. Nice and clean.

All in all, I’m quite happy with them so far – although it’s actually a little difficult to fully appreciate them as they’re currently protected with plastic and temporary wood treads. I suppose the only thing I wish we had done differently was open risers. That would have allowed for a nice clear line-of-sight through the middle of the house. The wife disagreed though, and I couldn’t exactly argue against the safety of our future children (which is really why we went and did all of this, right?) You can’t win them all I guess.

What’s the saying… happy wife, happy life? Wait, that’s a cliche too.