Can these wooden stairs be sanded and resealed?

[Dingdong99]

Just moved into a house that has a lot of dark wood everywhere that we're not keen on

We'll likely paint the architraves, but wondering what to do about the stairs

Do you think it would be feasible to sand the staircase back to its original colour, and reseal it? Or would it be too fiiddly?

I’d paint it. A nice muted blue or green.

If they are wood the. Yes absolutely.

Personally I think that dark wood looks lovely and it would be a crying shame to paint over it.

I think it's part of the character of the house and part of what makes it unique..it suits
What colour would you paint it?!

Don’t paint it, it will just look really dated.

either sand it or have a professional do it.

I really like. I didn't use to like dark wood but now I think it's more sophisticated

Omg it's gorgeous!

Why on earth would you want to change that?!

I'm currently sanding all mine back from white gloss 🤢 to stain it dark

I would change the wall colour to brighten it up and leave the wood. It's beautiful.

Frankly, if it could not be lightened, I'd pay a joiner to replace it. Utterly vile.

Oh I quite like it. And please try to remember this is someone’s home.

Utterly vile? Calm down.

Yes you absolutely can sand it back - if you like a pale-ish Scandi finish then Bona Natural primer followed by Bona HD Traffic x 2 is great.

But it would be hard work, especially the hand rail (which you'd have to do by sand to avoid gouging with a sander I think) so I would save up and hire someone to do it.

I wouldn't paint it but would like it to be its natural colour assuming that's a nice light wood colour

Are you sure it’s solid wood? You don’t want to sand it and discover it’s a thin layer of dark wood over composite. If it is, the base layer may not be anything like you are expecting.

Edited to say if it is solid and the base layer is light wood (both big ifs), I think you could sand it back but it would be fiddly because the style of stairs mean you’d have to do all surfaces.

It depends on what the original wood is - if it's dark, then sanding and refinishing won't do a thing

If the wood was light and has been stained with a thin, penetrating, 'watery' stain, you'd have to really take off a lot of the surface to lighten the wood and possibly damage the stairs in the process

Stairs are expensive to replace - I'd leave them until it was one of the last things on the home improvement TO DO list

Also this. They look like fairly thin stairs. As you’d have to sand all surfaces to some depth to get off a soaked in stain, you’d be taking off quite a bit of thickness. If they are at minimum safe depth (or just over) already, which it looks like they might be, you could end up with unsafe stairs.

I don’t know if you were suggesting sanding and sealing yourselves but if you are, you might want to get an expert to look at it first.

If you really hate them, I think it might be more efficient to just replace them altogether.

I'm relieved to hear you're not painting them; it would chip and look very tatty fairly soon. I think in theory they could be sanded and re-sealed, but it would be an awful lot of work for you/expensive if you paid someone to do it. I'd live with them for a while before making a decision; you might find the stairs don't really bother you once you've painted the architraves.