When you walk in the front doors of our house, you go up six stairs to get the main living area (and six down to get to the garage.) When we embarked on laying bamboo floors throughout, we decided to save the stairs for a later date. That was largely because we knew they'd be a challenge. The economical bamboo that we bought for the rest of the house ($3,000 for 1,400 square feet!) was only 3/8 inch thick, and the manufacturer didn't provide any coordinating stair pieces. (See photo to the right.)
Now that we're ready to put wood on the stairs, we have a little dilemma. The only bamboo stair treads that will fit out space cost $80 each - a grand total of $1,200 with shipping, which is nearly half of what we spent on the rest of the house! That means we're likely going to need to go with some other type of wood for the stair treads - which could cost as little as $300 depending on what we pick. But how do we handle this aesthetic dilemma? My initial thought was to try to match our flooring as closely as possible, but then I found these cool pix that use totally different kinds of wood - which seems to be a great way to embrace the problem. Any thoughts?
