My son removed his carpeting and is installing hardwood floors. He wants the stairway going to the 2nd floor to be hardwood also but only the stair tread not the backing. He wants to paint the backing white to match rest of trim in the house (apparently the latest style). He stripped off all the carpeting and found that the backing or riser section is rough wood and not worth sanding down. He wants to glue/nail or whatever some type of thin veneer to the backing to accept paint. The important part is that it be thin so as not to take away from the step width. My first thought was Luann underlayment, but I don't think that would be a good choice due to softness and porosity. Anything thicker would not be considered. Any suggestions?

Hi everyone, I'm at my wits end trying to figure this out... I have a brand new bamboo floor installed about 2 weeks ago, supposed to have 10 layers UV coating and all the cool stuff. The floor looks beautiful. However, it's got these weird dirt marks, I don't know how to describe it, all over the floor. I'm attaching a photo, it's hard to tell, but you can see it's visible when the light hits it. So here's what I can tell you: The floor was installed by professionals, glued down. After installation, they wiped it down with mineral spirits. They claim it's safe for the floor, and it's to remove the glue they may have tracked. After the floor was installed, there was additional work done around the house... Drywall was patched, texturing and sanding so there was a lot of dust. Also lots of workers coming in and out with their boots doing various work around the house. Almost 2 weeks later, the work is finally done, so I thought I would finally clean the floor. There was a film of dust all over the floor. It wasn't easy to get it off. Regular mopping with water didn't remove it. It was almost sticking to the floor. You have to really wipe hard to get rid of it. So I called my contractor about this, and his flooring guy came back out and wiped the whole floor down again with mineral spirits. That did get rid of the film of dust. Once the mineral spirits dried, I was able to see all these marks all over the floor. Some bigger than others, and they're not in any particular patterns. The marks do not come off easily. If you run your finger over it, you can't feel it (it's not raised or anything). To get rid of it, you pretty much have to moisten it a little bit and do a combination of rubbing with your thumb and lightly scratch it with your finger nails. Sometimes it'll work, but not always. When you wipe it really hard with a paper towel, it does turn a little grey (dirty). This is all over the floor, high traffic areas are worse than other parts, so I'm sure it's man-made. I just don't know how to get rid of it, and it's driving me nuts because during the way the rooms get a lot of sun, and all these marks show up. When I talk to my contractor about this, they just think wiping it down with mineral spirit will do. And for the first couple of hours when it's still wet, it looks great. But once it dies, the spots are back. Does anyone have any idea what these marks might be, and more importantly, how to clean them? Thank you for your help!