HawthorneVillager.com

Has anyone gotten their stairs stained darker after closing? My fiance and I don't really want to pay $848 to stain our stairs, so if anyone knows anyone who's done it, can you give me a heads up in terms of cost & quality,or even just advise?

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If you don't pay the $848, Mattamy will seal it as the natural colour, making it a pain in the butt to due afterwards. It's another example of arm twisting.

So they don't give you the option to leave it natural without any stain? That sucks

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I had wanted to paint the pickets white, and stain the handrail dk brown or black. Mattamy said they couldn't leave it "unsealed", so I had the ugly task of sanding! After sanding every bit of the coating off, I tried to test stain the handrail, but found that for some reason the wood just doesn't accept the stain very well. (We didn't upgrade the wood type.) The stain turned out looking rather "greenish". I have decided to paint the handrail black. It's alot of work, but it's going to look great! I'm pretty pleased with how it's turning out. The white also really brightens up the stairwell.

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New Miltonians

If you talk nice to the head builder on the site and ask him to not have the stairs finished you might get lucky. In our old Townhouse, I spoke to Dave and Sean (Head Builder and Assistant) and they left them raw for me. I then stained them myself afterwards. I must say it was a pain in the rear staining them. I have sucked it up and paid the $850 to have Mattamy stain the stairs and railings in our new house.

K

I think i'm about ready to suck it up myself! It sounds like it's not worth the trouble to do it myself

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We asked nicely...and the answer was no!

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New Miltonians

We upgraded our stairs to Maple + staining to a dark finish. Since we moved in, we are having issues with our stairs and the horrible job they did staining and finishing. Basically there are staple holes everywhere from I assume was from the cardboard cover they had during the building stage. They didn't wood fill them, and just stained over them…now there are dark "moles" everywhere. This was added to our 30 day and PDI.

Shipway/ Mattamy now want to come back and re-sand the stairs and than re-stain.

Can anyone tell me if this will cause the look of the wood to change? Right now, the Maple wood looks clean and smooth, somebody did mention that it may look grainy and rough (almost Oak like) after the fact..even after they stain and varnish.

Thanks for anyone's feedback.

P.S. Considering the $$ it cost to upgrade, you would have thought they would have done a better job…but like a lot of other things I've noticed more and more….they are sloppy, and once they have your $ and survey, don't do much of anything anymore!!!

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Greensburg B: Phase 14B

Our stairs are Oak, so not sure if the same thing applies. But we had them come back and restain parts more than once.

First time they came back and re-stained it, the handrails ended up feeling more rough, not as smooth (they came back and re-did it third time and it was fine). Also first time they came back and re-stained a few steps that had scratches but then the new steps now weren't as glossy as the other stair steps, so they came back again and got it right the third time.

At the end, all the stairs look good now. I like the stain being slightly glossy (it's also a dark wood colour stain).

About the almost oak-like I'm not sure what that means. We have oak and it doesn't look rough to us. Looking at the maple stairs versus the oak stairs, I really couldn't notice a big difference. That's why we ended up going with the Oak. But I know many people prefer maple, it's just that it's not a noticible enough difference to us to justify the higher cost.

Btw our backyard neighbours in phase 12 were successfull in getting Mattamy to leave their stairs UNSTAINED/UNSEALED..... check out this post http://www.hawthornevillager.com/phpbb/ ... s&start=15 and scroll down to read Gerald&Rocchina posting. But then they go on to say in another post that the builder team that let them close without having the stairs stained/sealed now no longer works for mattamy.

I also remember reading from others who were lucky enough to convince a mattamy building team to leave their stairs unstained/sealed. But basically if someone is lucky enough to get that to occur, they usually are asked not to tell anyone about it. If you ask the design center they'll most likely say no...sometimes though the actual head builder on your house may be nicer. Not sure if they have leeway or if it's just the rare fluke/lucky situation.