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!

As much as i too tire of oak. if you are going stain grade with floor and newels?, id say stick with oak.....I agree w klem paint grade id stick with select pine/poplar. Oak makes a very stout and solid newel connection vs chooing a softer wood for a tighter grain and a possible odd look. IMHO.

Sophie - We just had carpeted stairs replaced with red oak stairs (natural finish) with white risers. Our flooring guy said he prefers using MDF for risers, so that’s what he installed. The risers are white MDF. We now want to paint them to match the rest of the trim (which we’ll be painting soon). Just need to know what to use on MDF ... can we use Zinsser Bullseye 123 primer and semi-gloss BM Advance paint?

I’m not the OP but this question relates to my current dilemma. We are replacing treads on stairs and the “discussion” is stuck on the risers. Should they be stained to match or painted white. I have seen both but it seems more recent design is going with stained risers. Since the last time we tried to redo these stairs was 13 years ago and we couldn’t agree on a lot of things and scrapped the project, I don’t want to get stuck again. The pics are of our staircase ripped out carpeting, a pic with stained risers, and a pic with painted risers. Since we are going through the work and expense, I want to make sure we aren’t putting in dated design from the get go. The other point we are discussing is wood spindles vs metal.