MY MIL had a staircase like that, and as Kennebunker said, she used a rope hand rail. Is that your only access to the second floor? My MIL's staircase (it was the only one)nearly was the cause of her needing to go live in a nursing home as she became unable to negotiate it when rehabbing a hip replacement. You mentioned g'babies, so it's maybe something you might want to think about before it's an issue. Kid proofing is with gates. I think you could also have fun creating a curved, laminated handrail yourself, once you get some of the other issues sorted out. BTW, I think you water heater is great, just think of all the "free heat" it will throw off! As you get into old houses you might find it very comfortable to pull up a chair and warm your tootsies on the water heater. Do you have a chimney in the attic above that fp? Is there a void where masonry could still be? It wasn't uncommon for fake mantles and hearths to exist when houses were heated with stoves alone. (And you have a stove hole above it.) Molly~

We did not used a painted/stained combo, but strictly stained. Disclaimer: We did not stain anything ourselves, but paid a finisher to do it before install. We used 'rustic' cherry stained quite dark for all our interior trim, including our wood handrails. Since the entire 1st floor minus office is 'rustic' Maple, Treads and risers are also Maple, stained the same dark color. Balusters are wrought iron. I would say on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being the darkest stain possible before looking black) our cherry trim is probably a 7. Grain pattern is present but not overwhelming, it tends to be tighter on cherry than oak, hickory, or walnut. Our Cherry is not red-hued whatsoever, because its too dark. We had no issue with staining Maple, even though I have heard some on here mention it is impossible to stain Maple dark because it is such a hardwood. A good finisher will know what to do and should have no issues. I say 'rustic' because we requested wood with knots and such, to add more character and we wanted the cherry to match better with our knotty alder interior doors.

Home inspectors when I've sold houses before, note when things are not to code and with our previous minor issues (like a hand rail being too thin?), they don't prevent the sale of the house, they just alert the buyer. Anyways, not concerned about this specific picture's accordance to code, just looking for the cost estimate. Palimpsest - thanks! That's what I was estimating in my head, great to know!!!

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.