About a month ago, we removed the old (and nasty) carpet runner on the stairs. Underneath were the original hardwood stair treads. The wood looks pretty good with a little clean up. My original thought was to just leave the stairs like this. I think they look ok. But there has been two falls on these stairs since. So now I'm going to have to cover them again. I found carpet at DIY Stair Tread Carpet that appears to glue or stick to the treads. Or I could have an installer come and install the carpet like it was. Has anyone had any experience with this type of product? Here is a link that might be useful: Stair Treads

For stripping, a lot depends on the paint you are trying to remove...how old is the house? how many layers? any chance it is lead paint? Are you planning to paint or stain the treads once they are stripped? If you've only got a couple layers and/or if it's not lead paint, a heat gun may work well. Otherwise, you'll want a stripper. We stripped the stairs in our last house - a 200 year old farmhouse with about 15 layers of flaking nasty paint. I started with conventional methylene chloride (I think) based stripper. Each application would get one layer off and it was taking forever - I worked on 2 stair treads for about 3 solid days and they still weren't done. I tried a heat gun but it wasn't all that effective either, plus it's not really safe on lead paint. Plus the bottom layer or two were milk paint, which is near-impossible to strip with either a heat gun or regular stripper. I ended up using Peel Away, which is a lye based product - you paint it on like paste and cover it with special wax paper. Then you leave it sit for 24-48 hours. When you remove the paper and scrape off the peel away, the paint comes with it. You then wash the new wood and spray it with vinegar to neutralize the lye (otherwise your wood will continue to get eaten away). Peel away was great because 1) it eliminated a lot of elbow grease - the stripper did the work for us, 2) it was nasty, but not nearly as nasty as the meth chloride stripper, 3) it is considered one of the best strippers for lead paint because something in the lye bonds with the lead and prevents it from being absorbed by the body. Plus the lead paint stays wet and gooey, and never has a chance to get scattered as dust like it would be if you were scraping/sanding. Alas, it's not all peachy though. Peel Away (at least the formulation we used - they have a few different ones) can discolor/darken the wood, so it's best to use on wood you are planning to repaint, not stain. We stained the treads and painted the risers and handrail and you could definitely see the discoloration where we stained (we prefered to think of it as "patina" though!). It also didn't get all the paint out of the little cracks. In places it made the wood very soft so we had to be very careful when removing it - we gouged the wood in several places. Oh, and one thing I noticed was that you REALLY have to soak the thing in vinegar (which raises the grain) - if you don't neutralize it enough, you will wake up one day 3 months later to find your new paint job sliding down off the wall because the peel away has eaten it away from the backside. (Ask me how I know this....) Even with the Peel Away, it took us several months of weekends to get all the trim stripped in our house - it's a dirty messy job, but worth it in the end. HTH! Good luck!

Hey Bobsmyuncle I was hoping you'd come to the rescue. You gave me lots of info. to refinish a desk awhile back. I failed to complete it because I'm too chicken to use a harsh stripper. The top was the only part I got done. I'd love to take a hands on refinishing class but there's nothing like that around here. Anyhow, If I use a stripper to remove the existing finish do I need to take down the stairs? (I'm hoping you say no.) What about ventilation? Can I just open some windows and use fans? As for painting, I know my Dad took all of the stair pieces to his work and sprayed a clear coat. I don't know what it was but could find out. Just clean and 'scuff' not completely strip the protective clear coat? Thanks for the BIN suggestions. I'll use that if I ever get brave enough to try this. With the BIN after you sand, prime, is there a chance you would need to lightly sand and prime again or should one coat do it? I'm assuming there are directions on the stuff but was curious.

Most economical = carpet. After that, a solid finish (wood, cork, vinyl, tile, stone, etc) will require all the extras. Painted stairs will work...with plenty of elbow grease and with the FULL UNDERSTANDING the paint will wear/chip/"patina" inside of a few years. There are ways to lay a runner on the stairs and then trim out the edges of the tread/riser with wood-looking stuff. This will cut the cost in half of what I mention above. The other option is to place the runner and PAINT out the edges....creating a faux-painted-wood look which could be very handsome yet extremely practical. Notice how carpet keeps on coming up again and again? Yah. There's a reason for that. Those are builder grades stairs made for carpet.