We pulled up the carpet in the basement and put in vinyl plank. We were going to be pulling up the carpet on the main floor too. We couldn't just have a lonely little island of carpeted stairs in between! But what would we do? We talked about continuing whatever flooring choice we made for the main floor down the stairs, but eventually decided against it, thinking it would be too expensive and difficult to do. After showing Bob Thrifty Decor Chick's stairs (the first one I saw, and boy was my mouth hanging open when I saw that one!) and some others I'd seen online, I finally convinced him it'd be worth a try to stain the steps. If it didn't work, we could plan B it with a can o' porch paint!
First I had to pull up the carpet. That was not so hard. Taking all the pad and especially all the staples out, that was the hard part. I ended up using this plain old staple remover quite a bit.
I also had some pliers and the end of the hammer.Our stairs weren't in the best of shape, but we just made it work!
We did a lot of sanding. Sanding by hand, sanding with our power sander. I also filled some of the holes with stainable wood putty. I don't know that I'd bother with it too much if I did it again. It was good to fill deep, small holes, but not good for evening out big patches. It did stain a little differently than the rest of the wood, but each piece of wood stained a bit differently anyway, so it's not too noticeable. The risers were like dry, flakey woodsville. I used some filler on them too, those were getting painted anyway, so it didn't matter as much. We decided to use a pre stain wood conditioner. I don't know how much it helped, I like to think that it did. That stuff was stinky though and it had some scary warnings on the label. That and the top coat were the only things we paid full price for though. I hit the jackpot in the oops paint section.
I got the stain for $2.50 since the can was dented (it was marked down and in the oops section). I got a small can of black (or close enough to black) exterior paint for $1 (marked down from like $13). The white paint, for the trim along the sides, I already had on hand.
So after getting all the staples out, sanding the heck out of it, wiping it all up very carefully, I pretreated every other step then stained. 
I didn't bother taping at this point, since I knew I'd be painting all the other surfaces over. After waiting, polying, and waiting some more, I covered those steps with paper and did the same thing on the others (several days ended up passing before this part). After all the stairs were stained and coated and good and dry, I taped around the risers. 
I mixed some of the black paint in with some primer I had on hand and primed the risers. I used one sheet of paper to cover the step I was working over and moved it as I went along (it would have taken for ever to cut paper for each step and tape it carefully avoiding the risers) The next day I painted them over with the black paint. After all that dried, I removed the tape and taped along the trim on the sides. After doing two coats, I took the tape off. Some of the paint got through the tape. I tried to clean it up as best I could. It came off quite well from the treads. I still need to caulk a few spots on the trim and touch up the wall paint, but here it is- before and after.
We've been working hard these past two weeks on replacing the flooring on the main floor of our home. We had to move all the furniture and find new temporary homes for it. Then we had to pull up the carpet, padding, tack strips, and staples. 
I found some interesting stuff under the carpet. I should have taken a photo of the stuff for the record. 
Imagine here a photo of the following stuff all lined up next to a ruler for scale (archaeology skills my friend) a nickel, the starting end of a tape measurer, two rusty razor blades, the pull off tab part of a disposable coffee cup lid, two plastic beads, speaker wire, and a pile of dirt. We knew that the carpet was 6-3 years old when we bought our house (since the previous owners had put it in), which would make it 11-8 years old now. I found evidence of previous carpeting (brassy staples with remnants of green padding). The 'archaeology' got more interesting in the kitchen/entry area. 
The subfloor is higher in that area which led me to conclude that it was originally tiled with vinyl glue down tile (that and finding said tile which is also underneath the cabinets). The carpeted area was lower so it would be level with the padding included. Over the original vinyl tiles, someone installed a sheet vinyl floor. The bucket of vinyl floor adhesive used for the job was recently taken to the dump by us. Our utility room is like a previous fixture/floor or window covering/parts cemetery. Nobody before us seemed to want to throw anything away (we're either the 3rd or 4th owners of this house). The people we bought the house from put in laminate flooring in the kitchen and entryway, right over the partially removed sheet vinyl floor. 
Maybe they tried to remove it all but gave up? Kind of like the sheet vinyl installer tried to remove the original vinyl tiles but then gave up. Needless to say, the floor wasn't nearly as level as we thought it would be in that area. We had no illusions about the rest of the floor. We knew it was way off level (as is just about everything in this house). We tried to make things level (or at least flat) using roofing felt (I got that idea from the internet). It was an interesting process. I'm not sure how well it actually worked. Hopefully the new floor doesn't break or fall apart or something. 
In the kitchen and entry way we pulled up the rest of the sheet vinyl. 
Bob chiseled off the vinyl tiles that were in the front closet so it would be level with the rest of the entry way. 
That carpet got very dusty and dirty and there is no good way to clean it. It just looked ugly. Inspired by the 
Under the carpet was a big mess, but I knew that from taking a peek underneath before I ripped it all up. 
I decided to build a ledge on top of what was there. I used a piece of primed mdf baseboard turned upside down for the bottom trim piece. 
I attached it with liquid nails and some real ones as well. A four by one inch long piece of mdf went on top, then on top of that, I used a nicer piece of 6" wide pine. I used a handsaw to cut the pieces to size and angle (in the corner the ceiling is at an angle). I used our sander to round off the edges of the top piece (the edges that would be sticking out anyway) and the part where I cut. I primed the top. Eventually I will also screw the whole thing in place and paint it all out. But the holidays came along, and I had other things to do. 
Since we don't have a mantle, this new ledge became a fun little spot to decorate for Christmas.