Stairs, Stairs, Stairs

So we began to remove the paint from the sides of the stairs, as well as the varnish from the steps themselves. What a pain! I have refinished furniture in the past, and have now realized that bigger pieces are easier than these little stairs. The process we are currently using is to put on a stripping agent and letting it sit (blocking off the stairs from access to keep the kiddies safe). After a few hours, we then manually scrape all the gunk off. And I mean gunk. I don't know of any other way to describe this stuff. It's like rubberized paint and it can stretch and even gum up the scraper. For now, we are putting all this gunk into any empty ice cream bucket. Thanks to my husband's love of mint chocolate chip, I have a few to spare! Anyway, once we are all done scraping, we then scrub the surfaces with  denatured alcohol and steel wool. This removes residual rubberized paint and smooths out the surface a little. Finally, we rub it all down with more denatured alcohol on a lint-free cloth. It took me two hours to do two stairs and risers. This is going to take a lot longer than I originally planned - however, isn't that par for the course?

Here is what the stairs look like without the carpet and after being cleaned with soapy water.

You will have to forgive the poor picture quality - I am using my camera phone until we find the cord to download pictures from our digital camera. Regardless, you can still see the wonderful paint on the side and all over the steps. Apparently, the painter(s) knew the steps were going to be carpeted and so were not as careful as they could have been.

And here are what the steps look like that I was able to finish tonight.

I think that they look much better, but still need a lot of work. Once all the steps have been cleaned up, we will need to sand down everything and make a few minor repairs. Two down, 13 to go! Does anyone have any recommendations of a better, less messy process? Just wondering.