We are painting our staircase at home, it used to be dark brown ala 70ties - it ate all the light we had in our small hallway and now it is going to be white.
We started according to all the advises we got from a local store. Cleaned it and painted it in a paint which purpose was to provide a good foundation. An then we painted it in a water-based-paint?!? Should have known that this wasn't a good idea - the paint drew the old stains, paint to the surface and it turned out to be a yellow staircase with brown spots, could be fancy if we wanted it as such, but this wasn't what we have pictured the final result to be. Today I went to another local paint shop and the painter there said that you could paint it 1000 times (oh I exaggerate just a bit ;)) and it still would look like that. So I bought a oil-based white paint from him and we painted all day. My fingers got all sticky of all the paint on them and when I took a short break and was trying to get some coffee it was fingerprinting my whole kitchen. :)
But all in all the staircase is going to be gorgeous :)