What would you do with these stairs!? **HELP!**

[Nicholas Fisher]

What would you do with these stairs to finish them out? The pics on this post are a little old but essentially the whole interior is finished except for these stairs. The house is raised 8 feet with a small entry room on the ground level where the front door is... so these stairs are the main way to enter the living area. 

Problems:

1) The sheetrock guy sprayed texture all over the stairs because he didn't cover them. Its almost impossible to sand the stairs completely because of all the tight corners/trim

2) The handrails were dated and ugly so I took them off... I put up some cheap temporary handrails to pass final inspection, but I need handrail ideas 

3) The original stain on the stairs was a dark brown... combined with the sheetrock texture all over it.. this is a sanding nightmare

HELP!!