Finally happened! Staircase in last stages.

It took since June 2012 for us to finish the staircase. It's aaalmost finished too. The first step was the treads.

Phase one:

1. Remove the metal treads. Easy. So easy I snapped a photo and went hardy-har-har, this is a snap.
2. Which comes to step two.. Remove the tar-adhesive backed linoleum on the risers and treads. 
3. Which brings us to months later. Hard ass work. The solution was just water. 2 buckets of water for each tread. And I never did finish the risers. We simply painted them.
4. So we then I sanded with the full dust mask, not just the little white ones. 2 and-a-half  full days of dremel/round power sanding. it was very difficult on the rounded noses.
5. We then stained and poly-ed the steps.

Phase two: Spindles and railings

1. The original spindles were spaced not according to code, and not according to safety. A child could easily fall through them. So considering there was also one entire spindle missing upstairs, making room for even a large adult to fall through (yeah! scary!), we replaced all the upstairs spindles with a pretty generic variety from Home depot. but we had to do some paint removal to glue them, so that started us down the road to stripping and lead remediation.
2. My MIL started stripping the railing upstairs when we first got possession and had not moved in yet. Which made railing look gorgeous, but it wasn't so simple. Removing lead paint isn't something one should do without a large amount of resources and safety considerations. 
3. So fast forward a year-and-a-half. We finally did some official stripping. We started with the caustic variety of stripper, taking advice that one should not use a heat gun or sand off lead paint (though I did try it for a bit on some parts, trying to keep my gun at a low temp so it didn't smoke.) I can say, neither did the job well. The caustic stripper doesn't keep the paint wet enough, nor does it really work as people against eco-products claim it does. Each layer is one-at-a-time application and then the horrid job of removing the chemicals with a rinse. And on the original stain (lacquer?) that the first owners had on the wood, it turned it to glue.
4. So the last step was SmartStripper. I tried Eco-stripper (or somesuch name) but SmartStripper was much better. We applied it, then put a layer of saran wrap over top and left it overnight. This was to increase the dwell time to get as many layers off as we could, while also keeping everything wet. You don't want your stripper to dry out before you take it off, especially with the eco-products.
5. Removing the SmartStripper proved great. It's messy, but it kept everything wet, even penetrating into the grain. Exactly what you need if you need to dig down into the detailing of the woodwork. Which we did, and that was the layer with the lead paint, the layer on top of the original wood finish. And it didn't turn that original finish into gum, another benefit. But it's 5 times the price of a caustic run-of-the-mill stripper.
6. When you do get down to the detailing, you want to actually gouge out a layer of wood with a very sharp tool (the triangle one they sell at Home Depot). That way you can take out as much as the (white) lead paint but you actually enhance the original detailing in doing this. Sometimes you create a sliver, but for the most part, this is a great thing.
7. Justin did the next part. Cleaning the beejeezus out of the wood to get any stripper/original varnish off. Incredibly irritating and time-consuming, when you felt like you were already done I suppose. 
8. Fast forward another 3 months or so, when we could ship the young lad off to grandpa's overnight, and Justin stained and poly-urethaned the railings. We will paint the spindles white just to keep the trim consistent.
9. There are still some parts, where there were gouges long ago, and in detailing, where the white, lead paint wasn't all off. In those places, you need to get a paint with the undertone of your stain, and apply it with a little artist's brush. We got a colour that didn't match (forgot to bring a sample to the paint store). But it was close enough and was in the deepest crevices anyways, so you'll never be able to tell. Just do this before the poly-urethane. We wanted to do it before the stain, but were just not prepared, a.k.a. lazy.

And this is what you have.

Here is a shot upstairs: