Internal Doors & Flooring Question

Turkish1

Hi,

Doors:
Looking around at replacing all of the internal doors downstairs and also the banisters as current one is unsafe for baby/kid and have one on the way.

1. For the banisters - we were going to get a pine banisters and then paint the spindles white, and have the main pillars and the top handrail stained to a relatively dark colour - would this turn out ok with Pine, or would I need to go with a Walnut/Oak Handrail/posts?
2. We have a space under the stairs (boiler etc there at moment) so want to get this covered at the same time as doing the doors - space is roughly 70" at the highest point - and 75" long along the floor. Anybody got a rough cost for covering up and having a small door for access? Likely to go with cheap wood (pine?) and paint it white.

Floors:
We were going to get the original floors sanded and stained in the sitting room and dining room but when I pulled up the laminate that is there, at least 5 of floor boards have been cut and lifted at some point. The cuts are not even straight across and is a very poor job to be honest.

I prefer the original boards as have a bit of character but I am concerned with the finished look/potential cost of replacing all these boards. I am now thinking that we may have to go with new flooring (probably engineered semi-solid). Am I overreacting and will the the floor look ok once stained (going for a relatively dark stain). Anyone any advice?

tabby aspreme

You may not be able to change the main pillars or newel posts on the stairs as they usually are an integral part of structure, it can be difficult to get a natural look from dark stained pine , stained oak or unstained walnut may be a better option.
If the floor boards are no more than sixty years old they are probably standard 6 / 1 boards , about 140 mm wide and would be straightforward to replace.

chris445

The banister should be no problem at all. Any carpenter should be able to replace in a day and if they have experience in doing the job would possible get the under stairs blocked the same day.
It is a job I have done a few times myself and have done the look you are talking about too with a slight difference.
We done the spindles and newels in pine and painted white. We done the handrail and spindle caps in mahogany and varnished them.
I was a bit skeptical about how the finish would look with the 2 colours but have to say it looked well in the end.

For under the stairs we built a small 3.2 pine frame and covered with MDF with bull-nosed edges and hung an MDF door on cabinet hinges on the high end. We also added a few shelves under there to make the most of the storage.

For the floor I would rather the engineered floor all day but that is more my personal preference than anything else. It shouldn't be too big of a job to replace sections of the original floorboards depending on how much is missing. On the bad cuts you can simply cut back halfway onto the last joist and fill in with a board and brad nails. Once you have all the sections filled then you could have the whole floor sanded and finished.