Insofar as arts & crafts style meant honest materials/ design your heavy 6x6 newels/guardrails are fine. By honest materials, I mean shingles and heavy timbers that aren't ashamed about what they are. 20 years previous, Victorians embraced the idea of all forms of sham and pretense. The porch posts were more like table legs writ large. The popular furniture style du jour was expended into the porch, the cornice, and the dormers! If a material could be tortured into a convoluted shape by saw or blade, it was. Or they cast it in plaster and tacked it on. Was it supposed to be emulating ancient stonework? then paint wood it and embed the surface with sand! Instant faux-stone. Things would not always (if ever?) be what they appeared. A&C was a reaction against this, and timber and shingle and natural lines without artifice and pretension were embraced. Your little bungalow is a simple expression of an honest ideal. "Let things be what they are". They _did_ like to use oversize elements, especially on the porch. Think of the huge pyramidal rounded fieldstone piers, and knee-braces and timbered gable decorations. Brutalism is something else entirely. It's about raw unfinished (and intentionally roughened) concrete surfaces. Not 6x6 porch railings. I grew up in a 1938 house that was sort of a stone cape cod and adirondack lodge combo. It had a third-floor interior balcony/catwalk enclosed with 4x6 white pine rails and 6x6 newel posts. Woodsy, but not brutal. The stair treads were solid 6x10's. I should scan the construction photo album from that place some day... Casey

I wanted to update this thread for anyone else with a safety issue with stair rails. My SIL used Lexan, similar to plexi but better. He measured and had all pieces cut to fit, rounded edges, etc. We made a few taller where it was needed. He then used white zip ties to secure it. You can hardly see its there (except where the little dirty handprints are) and we feel so much better. We still have the airy open feeling, without the danger of our grandkids climbing and falling. One item done and lots more to do! Thanks to all that chimed in!

Be sure to sell or give away that beautiful old railing and not throw it on a heap. I happen to like it. But indeed, it might look better in black. The railing you have posted instead gave me some shudders. Quite a contrary style and not one I'd welcome in my home. Way too modern for a ranch home, is what comes to my mind. If you are really going to get a new railing, I like the one Judy proposed, although I wouldn't want it in white at your place. Perhaps in black and the railing that matches the wood of the stairs? Or maybe something like this?

Let's compare to cost of reSURFACING the treads = $200 stair/riser combination. Hmmmm. The $40/tread looks pretty good. If you have 10 treads = $400. If you have 20 treads = $800. Hmmmmm...I'm not seeing an issue. The 'average' tread count (just off the top of my head) is around 13. That means $520 for the trread/risers to be refinished. That's one HECK of a deal! Let's look at the cost of a PROPERLY installed (to code) railing. If you have 10ft the cost of the railing $80/lf = $800. If you have 20ft then it costs $1600. Shall we assume the railing INCLUDES the spindles, newel posts, AND matching the stain of the treads??? If it does, you are in a SWEET spot! To save more money, you would have to break code laws and have a dangerous railing...and that costs way more in the end...than if you just do it properly the first time (home owner's insurance does NOT cover damage/injuries with non-code meeting items...like railings and stairs). Remember: Stairs require knowledge of AND COMPLIANCE WITH 15+ different code requirements. The $80/linear foot = paying for a company to KNOW what those are...AND to do it properly. The materials are relatively easy...it's the KNOWLEDGE that is so expensive.