Geez... have you been taking pictures in my house?
I have almost the exact same issue. A few years ago, I bought our house, ripped up the dreadful carpet and discovered horrible brown paint (in many layers). I used some sort of nasty chemical stripper and peeled off layer after layer of paint.
In the end, my stairs only look maginally better than yours... no amout of stripper would release the remaining... paint? Stain?... whatever it is that's still left on the stairs.
In the end I've decided to paint the stairs again and get a carpet runner (the centre of my stairs is a bit more worn and pitted than yours appear to be. Oddly, my wife really likes the beat up look... I hate it. If I had 3 to 4000 to spare I'd buy a new staircase.
An interesting anecdote: When using that nasty stripper it creates piles of stinky paint scrapeings... I had disposed of all of this in my garbage can outside as it was especially noxious. The next morning my wife went outside to put out the garbage and came in saying there was a raccoon in our trash... and it wasn't running away (we have a lot of raccoons in our neighbourhood and if you catch them in the act they ususally just scamper away). A raccoon that doesn't run usually means it is sick... most likely with rabies.
So I, in the role of the brave husband, go out to see what's up. I inch up to the can and can see a furry something nestled in the can... I gently kick over the can and out rolls a very fat and very dopey raccoon. The raccoon stumbles to his (her?) feet and promptly falls off the porch and continues to stumble/stagger away...
It is only when I go to pick up the can that I realize that all of my paint scrapeings are at the top of the can... the racoon was completely high on stripper fumes.
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"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke
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