Stairs & trim
Stairs are the most skill-dependent work in flooring and the most closely looked at. Every tread is a separate fitting, the nosings have to line up down the whole flight, and unlike a floor there is nowhere for a bad cut to hide under furniture. In hillside towns like West Linn and Lake Oswego they come up on most jobs, so we quote them as their own line rather than burying them in a square-foot rate.
Fourteen separate fittings, all of them visible
A room is one shape. A staircase is a dozen or more individual fittings stacked vertically, each one cut to a slightly different width because the walls are not parallel, and all of them read at once from the bottom of the flight. A floor forgives a millimetre. A stack of treads does not, because the eye follows the line of the nosings straight down the run and picks up any drift instantly.
It is also the part of the house you meet with your feet before you see it. A nosing that is proud, a tread that flexes, a riser with a gap at the edge — these register as a house that was not finished properly, even when the person noticing could not tell you what is wrong.
That is why we price stairs separately and honestly. Folding them into a square-foot number either overcharges someone with a simple flight or, more often, undercharges the job and creates pressure to do it quickly. Neither serves anyone. You should be able to see what the stairs cost and decide.
What's included
- Treads, risers and nosings in carpet, laminate or LVP
- Landing and half-landing transitions detailed to match
- Trim scribed to out-of-square walls in older homes
- color and plank direction planned across levels
- Quoted as its own line so you can see the cost
- 10 year labor warranty, plus the manufacturer warranty on the material
West Linn, Lake Oswego, Bull Mountain — houses built on a slope
West Linn is built on hills and river bluffs, which means daylight basements, split-levels and a great deal of vertical circulation. Lake Oswego's later hillside neighborhoods are similar, and Bull Mountain in Tigard is the same story on sloped lots. In all three, a flooring quote that ignores the stairs is not a quote for the job.
Multi-level homes also change how the floor should be planned. From partway up a flight you see two levels at once, so plank direction and color want deciding together rather than room by room. Getting that right is free at the estimate stage and impossible to fix afterwards.
A common and good-looking answer in these houses is carpet on the stairs with a hard surface above and below. It is quieter, it is safer on a run of treads, and the contrast between the two materials reads as deliberate. Where a client wants the hard floor to continue down the stairs, that is very doable — it just needs proper stair nosings rather than plank cut and glued over the edge.
Stairs & trim we've installed
Scribing, not shimming
In the older housing around Newberg, McMinnville and West Linn's Willamette neighborhood, nothing is square. Walls lean by a few millimetres over their height, treads are not the same width top to bottom, and original trim has settled with the house. The correct response is to scribe to what is actually there — to cut the material to the shape of the wall — rather than force a straight cut and fill the gap.
It is slower. It is the whole difference between work that looks installed and work that looks fitted, and on a staircase, where the joints are at eye level, it is the only approach worth taking. The same applies to trim: undercutting a door casing so the floor runs beneath it looks finished, while cutting the floor around the casing never quite does.
Nosings deserve their own mention. They take the whole load of every footfall at the most exposed edge in the house, and a nosing that is glued rather than properly fixed is the most common failure we are called to look at. They get mechanically fastened.
Our ten year labor warranty covers stair and trim work the same as everything else we install, with the manufacturer's warranty on the material.
What homeowners say
"Professional and timely carpet installation upstairs and on stairs."
Jeffry Walker Verified Google Review "Matt Norman was great to work with! Great customer service! Installation was smooth and easy. No complaints!"
Emilie Jacobs Verified Google Review
Stairs & trim questions
Can you carpet just the stairs?
Yes, and it is a common request in houses with hard flooring on both levels. It is quieter, it is safer underfoot, and the contrast looks intentional. There is a minimum on any job, so if the stairs are the only thing on the list it is worth a quick call to check the numbers make sense for you.
Should the hard floor continue down the stairs?
It can, and it looks excellent when done properly. What it needs is purpose-made stair nosings rather than plank cut and glued over the tread edge. The nosing is what takes the wear and the impact at the front of every step, and skipping it is the shortcut that shows up first.
Our stairs squeak. Can that be fixed while the flooring is done?
Often, yes, and with the covering off is exactly the moment to do it. Squeaks are usually movement between the tread and the stringer, and once we can see the structure we can refasten it. We will tell you what we find before we do anything, so there are no surprise additions.
Do you match new trim to existing woodwork?
We do our best, and in older homes we would generally rather work around original trim than replace it. Where new trim is needed we match profile and finish as closely as the available stock allows. If an exact match is not achievable we will say so at the estimate rather than let you discover it at the end.
Flexible financing available
Stairs & trim by city
Other floors we install
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Luxury vinyl plank (LVP)
Luxury vinyl plank installed throughout Newberg and the surrounding valley — waterproof, hard-wearing and warm underfoot.
Learn more → -
Laminate
Laminate flooring supplied and installed around Newberg — a hard, realistic surface that has come a long way since the 1990s.
Learn more → -
Tile
Tile work around Newberg with a particular specialty in tile showers — including the waterproofing behind them that nobody ever sees.
Learn more → -
Carpet
Carpet supplied and installed across Newberg and the Willamette Valley, from bedroom re-carpets to whole houses.
Learn more → -
Floor removal & demo
Floor removal and demolition around Newberg — the old floor out, the subfloor assessed, and the mess taken away with it.
Learn more → -
Quartz Counters
Quartz countertops for Newberg kitchens and bathrooms — templated, fabricated and installed as part of a full-service job.
Learn more →
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