ᐅ Additional Costs for Oak Stair Treads Instead of Beech – Excessive Overcharge?

Hello everyone,

We have a concrete platform staircase in our house that is contractually supposed to be covered with beech wood treads. The standard railing is planned with a wooden handrail and stainless steel round balusters.

The staircase has 6 straight steps, followed by a rectangular landing of about 3 square meters (32 square feet), and then another 8 steps. The stairs run parallel with about 20 cm (8 inches) of space between them, so no guardrail is needed at the landing; the 20 cm (8 inches) gap can be bridged with a post instead.

This concerns one floor because the basement stairs will be tiled.

We now want to change the material from beech to oak because we have many oak elements in the house and beech just doesn’t match. For the railing, instead of stainless steel rods, we chose white lacquered square wooden balusters and also want a rounded handrail.

The stair builder also offered to match the wood color to the wood-look tiles, which are quite close to the original oak tone—so nothing unusual.

We initially budgeted about 4,000 euros more. Based on my own research online, I found material cost increases for oak to be around 50–100 euros per step. Plus the higher cost for oak parquet instead of beech parquet on the landing, and the changes for the railing.

The quote, however, completely shocked us: nearly 9,000 euros in additional material costs for one floor. They calculated 280 euros more per step in material costs. For the risers, which are now white lacquered multiplex panels instead of beech, the extra cost is about 80 euros per riser.

At first, we seriously thought they had offered us the stair covering for two floors, with only one floor requiring a railing and without extra costs, but for a complete staircase. That would have been realistic or even quite reasonable. But this is not the case.

Six years ago, we paid 11,000 euros for a three-floor staircase made of beech wood with a railing, including two 2-meter (6.5-foot) long glazed guardrails on the ground floor and first floor, fully installed.

So, I really feel that the price increase quoted here is almost excessive. I just fear it will be difficult to find another stair builder.

Do you have any ideas?

Best regards

Yes, it is too expensive. For us, it was an additional cost of 4 to 5k about a year ago for a virtually identical situation.

Knot-free oak currently costs about 2.5 to 3 times as much as beech when sold as joinery timber. The service provider’s additional charge is not a bargain, and your own calculation seems somewhat unrealistic. I expect there will still be some room for negotiation, but not too much.

Silvia79 schrieb:

which quite closely match the original oak tone. So nothing unusual.

You are mistaken there. Your service provider is thinking ahead for you. When you order oak wood for a staircase, you select the quality and color of each batch very carefully to match tones. Oak can have very different colors. There is not just one “original oak tone.”

For us, the price difference in the offer between a beech and oak platform staircase with risers is about 3,500. I cannot assess the railing part. Isn’t this separated in the offer?

Oh yes, of course it depends even more precisely. For example, finger-jointed or laminated... that also makes a significant difference.

For us, there would be an additional 3,000 for the upgrade from beech to oak with the general contractor.

However, we are now contracting the staircase locally ourselves and are getting an even better overall price. We didn’t even request beech for that.