Hardwood stairs in Toronto

Before you call anyone

Stairs are not priced by the square foot

A flight of thirteen treads is roughly forty square feet of surface and roughly three times the labour of the four hundred square feet of floor it leads to. Every tread has a nosing to profile, two return edges, a riser behind it and a stringer beside it, and none of that is reachable by the belt sander that does the floor — it is edger, corner sander and hand work, tread by tread. That is why a quote that prices stairs by area is a quote that has not measured them.

The published bands below are for the floor. Fixed price in writing. It never moves after the free in-home estimate. The stair number is given per tread and per flight after the same in-home measure, and it is itemised separately in the written price rather than folded into a square-foot rate.

The stairs usually arrive attached to a floor, and which service that floor needs changes the stair scope with it: stair refinishing where the treads are sound, floor refinishing for the run they meet, and restoration where treads have to be replaced rather than sanded. Worth reading first: what refinishing an existing floor involves and what moves a quote inside the published bands.

What moves a stair number: the tread count, whether the treads are solid or capped, the nosing profile, what is on them now (carpet, paint, an existing finish), whether the risers are being painted or finished, and whether there is a landing. The cost guide sets out the same variables for the floor.

What people actually mean

Four different jobs, all called “stairs”

Refinishing existing hardwood stairs

Sand to bare wood, fill, stain to match the floor, finish. The work is in the nosings and the returns. Detail and sequence are at stair refinishing.

Carpet off, hardwood underneath

Common in Toronto houses built before the 1970s, where solid oak treads sit under carpet that has protected them for fifty years. Several hundred staple holes per flight, each filled before sanding. Whether this is possible is decided by lifting one tread’s worth of carpet at the estimate, not guessed at afterwards.

New treads and risers

Where the existing stairs were never meant to be seen — construction-grade pine or plywood under carpet. New solid treads, either full-depth or retrofit caps over the existing structure, finished to match the floor.

Matching stairs to a floor that is already finished

The hardest colour match there is, and the most common standalone stair job, because it is what happens after a contractor priced only the floor. Stain is mixed on site against the actual floor.

Proof, with the numbers

Two staircases, written up in full

Both are the hard version of this job — a staircase that had to match a floor built on a different assembly — and both publish the measurements rather than only the photograph.

Every case study publishes what was measured, not only what was achieved — all of them are here, and each one names the substrate, the species, the readings and the protocol it followed.

The method behind them

Why stairs are the part that gives a job away

The mechanism behind the moisture and movement decisions in that job is set out in the climate and moisture protocol, and the machine sequence in the refinishing machines paper — the edger section is the one that covers stairs.

Hold us to it

Put any stair quote against The EcoWoods Well-Installed Framework

27 criteria, version 1.0, published under CC BY so you can apply it to every quote you are holding — ours included. For stairs the criteria that bite hardest are the ones about specification and accountability: is the tread count in the written price, is the nosing profile specified, and is the colour match being made on site or from a card. Any critical criterion answered “no” is an unresolved defect in that quote, whatever the price says.

Straight answers

Questions people actually ask about stairs

How much does it cost to refinish hardwood stairs in Toronto?

Stairs are quoted per tread and per flight, not per square foot, because the work is geometry rather than area — every tread has a nosing, two return edges and a riser, and none of it can be reached by the machine that does the floor. Ecowoods does not publish a per-tread band, because a stair price that is honest depends on the count, the profile of the nosing, whether the treads are solid or capped, and what is on them now. Fixed price in writing. It never moves after the free in-home estimate. The floor those stairs meet is published: $4.75–$7.50 per square foot for a full sand and finish, $2.50–$4.00 for a screen and recoat.

Can carpeted stairs be converted to hardwood?

Usually, and what decides it is what is under the carpet. Builder-grade stairs are often construction-grade pine or plywood stringers never meant to be seen, in which case the answer is new treads and risers rather than refinishing. Where the treads are solid oak — common in Toronto houses built before the 1970s — the carpet has usually protected them, and they refinish to better condition than the floor around them. The staple holes are the work: several hundred per flight, each one filled before sanding.

Will refinished stairs match my floor exactly?

They will match if the stain is mixed against the finished floor rather than against a sample card, and they will not if it is not. Stair treads are usually a different cut of the same species and take stain at a different rate, so the same formula produces a visibly different colour. The join between the top tread and the landing is where this shows, and it is the detail that gives a refinish away.

How long do stairs take, and can we use them?

A single flight is typically a day of sanding and filling plus the finish schedule. The constraint is not the work, it is that a staircase is often the only route between floors — so the sequence is planned around that before the first machine arrives, rather than discovered on the second morning. Where a house has one staircase, the flight is usually run in halves so one side stays walkable.

Are stairs included in a hardwood flooring quote?

They should be itemised in it, and the most common defect in a Toronto flooring quote is that they are not — the floor is priced per square foot, the stairs are mentioned, and the number for them appears later. The EcoWoods Well-Installed Framework v1.0 is published free for exactly this: 27 criteria to put to any quote you are holding, including one of ours.

Do you do stairs without doing the floor?

Yes. Stairs on their own are a common job — most often when a floor was refinished by someone who priced only the floor. The colour match to an existing finished floor is harder than matching two new surfaces to each other, and it is done on site against the actual floor rather than from a record of what was used.

Who does the work?

Salaried employees of Ecowoods Hardwood Flooring Inc.. No subcontractors. Stairs are where that matters most: they are the slowest, most detailed and least profitable part of a flooring job per hour spent, which is precisely why they are the part a subcontracted crew rushes.

Coverage

32 areas across Toronto and the GTA

Stair stock tracks house stock: pre-war semis in Leslieville and Riverdale usually have solid oak under the carpet, post-war bungalows in Etobicoke and North York often do not, and a downtown slab condo has no stairs at all until someone builds them.