Staircase

Before



After

In 2 hours last night, I got about 4 stairs washed. The tar adhesive was so nasty, I think the stairs, at a per hour labour, have been our biggest challenge yet. The kitchen in its entirety may compete with that eventually due to the plaster demo, electrical, plumbing, install, etc, but at this  point, these stairs take the crown.
The metal edging over the noses wasn't hard to remove. The linoleum was challenging to remove. The tar adhesive was brutal to remove, and the adhesive/clay at this stage is moderately challenging. See that home depot bucket? I refill that every half tread. So I fill 2 buckets and work with those for every.
Single.
Tread.

The work is like having thick clay on a surface. You wet it and it becomes thicker and thicker. So even the first rinsing dirties the whole bucket and I resolve to "wash" with dirty water for most of the cleaning. But slowly it is coming off.

If I had known that simply cleaning would prove this effective, I would have gone lighter on the lino removal. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 because between me and Justin taking shifts at the house, it's hard to know at what point water would have worked. But the stairs have some nasty gouges in them from our removal process. Hopefully all of this is not for nought and we can sand them back into shape.

The black paint of the risers is iffy for me. Does it contain lead?  Should we try removal? Painting over with white (or even black?). I don't know.