I've been so inspired by the stair runners I saw here that I decided to tear up the nasty brown carpet off my stairs. This was also done for safety as the top step carpet was coming undone and my son cut his toe on one of the tacs from the tac strip. Anyway, now my question is what the heck to do...

We had carpeting up the stairs and on our landing but not in the bedrooms (they're all hardwood). The bedrooms are in decent condition but don't have that nice shine to them. In the process of removing the padding on the stairs we ran into MANY staples. So we pulled them out with pliers. However, I noticed that after pulling them the wood area was a bit sharp where they came out so I lightly sanded to make sure barefeet wouldn't be hurt by it. But now there are little sanded marks all over the stairs. I want to rip up the carpet on the landing, but am afriad we'll run into the same issue with having to do spot sanding to make sure bare feet don't get any splinters. I'd consider having the stairs and the landing all refinished but since they go right into the bedrooms, I imagine it would make the bedrooms look in pretty ratty shape. I wasn't really planning refinishing the entire 2nd story when I started ripping up the carpet off the stairs. (anyone have price estimates for approx. 550sq ft of rooms/landing and a 13 step satirway?). Is there anyway to get around this issue without having to refinish the entire 2nd floor but still rip up the carpet on the landing and spot sand where needed? ALso we HAVE to at least put a carpet runner back on the stairs as they are SO loud without the carpet. I suppose we could just recarpet the whole thing, but I was hoping to keep the landing hardwood, and do a runner up the stairs.