Wood – transition between hardwood plank and molding on stairs

Skirt boards are one of the hardest things in my opinion to do. I can rip apart a bathroom and have it put back together in 2-3 days and it might take me the same amount of time to make a couple of long stair skirts. All of your stairs wont be the exact same measurements, walls are not perfectly flat... One of the things that I source out now for sure.

The short answer is it depends. If the staircase will be carpeted or if there is no overhang on the treads then the answer is tread first. Basically this is faster because your treads don't have to be perfect. Also your skirt doesn't have to be perfect.

If your stairs will be showing the treads or if there is an overhang I would suggest installing the skirt and then the treads. This will give you a cleaner look. Also good luck notching out the skirt to match all of the overhangs on the tread if you decided to do it last.

Baseboards provide a useful function in a house. They are not purely aesthetic. They protect the bottom of the drywall from being damaged, they build a stopping point for dirt, they keep drywall/paint from being damaged by feet (shoes). Anyone buying a house with drywall walls would expect some sort of minimal baseboard.

Shoe molding has three issues. It isn't big enough to protect anything, since you need a gap between drywall and flooring it would be very hard to install, and then since you have this gap the shoe molding will surely get pushed into it, since it is usually flimsy.

Install your floors and sit you baseboards on top of flooring. If you cut out bottom of drywall so that the drywall depth acts as expansion gap for wood, you don't need shoe molding.

Note: Think about what type of house you have when you put up molding and what you have in each room. If this is every single room and you have a nice house I would at the very least put up 4"+ baseboards. There is usually very little difference in price and installation and staining/painting isn't really any harder. If you want cheap and fast go with the primed pine from the big boxes. These usually take one quick coat of paint and good to go.