Carpet to hardwood stairs in the GTA

The most requested job of 2026

New builds from Vaughan to Milton still ship with carpet on the stairs and a laminate or cheap engineered floor in the field. The first winter, the carpet looks like a rental. We pull it, inspect the stringers, sister anything that flexes, and install solid treads with returned ends on the open side.

It is the highest-return interior change available in most of those houses, because the flight sits in the sightline from the front door and nothing else in the hall competes with it.

What is actually under the carpet

Usually a plywood or MDF tread that was never meant to be seen, a pine or poplar riser, and a few hundred staples. That is not a defect — it was specified to be finished later.

The good news is that a factory-cut flight in a 2010s house is generally square and consistent, which makes a retread predictable. A 1926 Toronto flight cut by eye is a different proposition, and that is why every riser gets measured before anything is quoted.

What goes wrong when you hire a floor guy

A leftover plank glued to drywall on the open side. A 5/8" tread next to a 3/4" floor. A rail that is furniture, not structure. The inspector fails the nosing. The stain does not match. This is not a flooring accessory. It is millwork.

The nosing is the specific failure. A retread cap sitting on top of the old tread wants to hang further than the code allows, and letting it is the fastest route to a failed inspection. Removing the original nosing so the new tread beds flat is the step that separates a stair job from a covering job.

What it costs

A standard 13-step flight with oak treads, wood or painted risers and a matching nosing typically runs $6,100–$9,800 installed in 2026 across the GTA — computed from the same estimator that prices every other job on this site, so it cannot drift from what you will actually be quoted.

Custom walnut, curved flights, winders and iron balusters move that number up. Railings are quoted as a system, not an extra, because the rail is frequently a bigger share of the work than the treads.

Your own city carries its own labour and travel multiplier. Use the estimator with your step count and municipality rather than assuming a Toronto number applies in Barrie.

Sequence it with the floors

If the main floor is being installed or refinished as part of the work, do the stair in the same visit. The first and last risers depend on the finished floor heights at both ends, and the finish only matches if it is applied to both from the same batch on the same day.

Doing the floor in spring and the stair in autumn guarantees a visible difference, and it is the single most common reason a stair and a floor do not match in an otherwise well-built house.