Renovating my stairs

The staircase has character, unlike laminate flooring, and I rather like it.

If you can afford a carpet right away, that's what I'd recommend. Then you can sit back and watch someone else do the work.

If you want to wait a while before buying a carpet, a quick onceover with a coarse bit of sandpaper followed by a wash with the sugar soap followed by a couple of coats of durable acrylic paint in a tasteful colour of your choice should improve the appearance of it considerably for some effort but very little money. Don't do it if you think you might ever sand it back to bare wood, though!

I don't use oil based paint on woodwork any more having sanded several lots off it from my house to prep for repainting. I use matt water-based woodwork paint, then you can just wipe it down and touch it up when necessary. Oil paint is harder-wearing but requires a total repaint when it chips. Also the clean-up and drying times are a nightmare. I don't use brilliant white so yellowing is not a problem.

I also find that acrylic or emulsion works absolutely fine for radiators although paint companies don't want us to know this for some reason best known to themselves.

 

Clueless I would go for carpet
Less work
Safer
Quieter
Quicker

Jack McH

 

Quite right! My boys and I have races down the stairs (in a sleeping bag) and that can still be a tad sore even *with* carpet. We do it less and less now though: they win too often these days Oh well, fun while it lasted!

 

As Pete and others have said , cleaning a painted flight of stairs back to prime wood - Nightmare job ! It will take forever using an orbital sander clogging with paint.
You could use a 115mm hand grinder with flap discs to remove the paint then sand down and oil . If you start today I reckon you can finish this for next Christmas
As Redstar suggested a nice berber carpet will look great alongside laminate and tiles - safer to .
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/4-1-2-115...Garden_PowerTools_SM&var=&hash=item4aabe244c5

 

Thinking out loud

being it's a old house would that paint have lead in it ??????

just thinking

 

I don't think my house is as old as I originally thought. I'm sure the deeds said 1906, but Zigs reckons more like 1950s, and my sister's house was built from the same blueprint, and she says around 1960.

 

You can hire a 'tool', similar to a floor sander, for stripping paint off stairs - if you really want to do it, I'd recommend you talk to your nearest HSS hire shop. Your new toy is perfect for surface sanding but is not designed for this type of 'juggernaut job' and will be burnt out long, long before you get back to bare wood - apart from the time, the dust and the fortune you're going to spend on abrasive paper. Additionally, no 'machine' is going to get into the tiny corners, cracks and crevices so, at some point you're going to need paint stripper of some description.

I too would recommend carpet for all the reasons others have stated, but if you really don't want carpet, you can either use some anti-slip paint - Dulux make some but I don't think I've ever seen it on the shelves in B&Q, Homebase etc. so you'd possibly have to buy it from a more specialist shop or order it online (it's ****ing expensive) or Sadolin do anti-slip floor varnish, which is a lot less expensive.

Option 3 (which would be my personal preference) would be to pay a professional floor sanding company to come in and do the job for me. Expensive? Yes probably .... but they'll do it quickly, efficiently, with the right equipment and they'll seal the wood too - something most amateurs don't necessarily think about. I might only be a 'girl' (I use the term in it's loosest sense you understand!!) but I've been DIYing for a good few years and there isn't much I haven't done - painting, papering, tiling, carpet laying, door hanging, furniture building - but there are some jobs best left to the professionals and I'd say, stair stripping was definitely one of them.