Q: I have recently installed 672 square feet of pumpkin pine floors in our home and 1×12 white pine upstairs. The reason for this is I found the pumpkin to be somewhat harder than the white, thus a little better to stand up to foot traffic. My problem is I need to install stair treads and cant seem to locate pumpkin pine in a stander 1×12. It all seems to come as the floors did w/groves on the underside. If I use this to make my treads you will see the underside above eye level with the overhang.
I can’t plane them off as I will still have to sand them and then they will be too thin. I also don’t want to add a 3rd species of wood into the house. what do I do?
2nd Question: Where does pumpkin pine wood come from and what other names do they call it. I have called several lumber yards and they never heard of it. I have read that it is eastern white pine, is that correct? I installed white pine on the 2nd floor and it is not nearly as hard as the pumpkin.
A: There are private mills all over the place. Any of them would likely make you treads for the right price. Another option could be to have stair nosings made of white pine and after cutting back the over hang on the existing tread (I don’t know what you have in place currently) flush with the riser below it, install the nosing and then fill in the rest of the tread with your white pine flooring.
I’ve never heard of pumpkin pine either. I do however have an encyclopedia called Wood Explorer and according to it, Pumpkin and eastern white are the same.