Painting Stairs

[fruitydelicious.livejournal.com]

I want to paint the stairs at our new house. They're wood and feel solid, except for the edge of the first step, which looks like it's rotted a bit. Obviously, that needs to be fixed up before they are to be painted. (Any ideas?) We just recently had the carpet removed from them (they had carpet everywhere x_x) and they look rather icky. You can see a few layers of old paint, and like I said, they just look icky. I'm thinking that a nice deep red would look great! ^_^ My question is, how would I go about painting them? I know for sure they'd have to be sanded first. I don't have a sander, so I'd have to do it by hand. Luckilly, most of the stairs are cement and therefore don't need painting. There's only five wooden steps, with the top step being a small porch before the door. What type of sandpaper would you recommend? After they were sanded, would I need to prime them? After that, what should I paint them with? I mean, would something labelled as outdoors paint work fine? I doubt that there's a specific "stair paint"! XD



This is the stairs with the carpet on them. Sorry, that's the only photo I have. The garden's beautiful, I'd love to show it to you, but then you'd be abel to pick the house out on the street, and that wouldn't be good.

Yup, so thanks muchly for the help! ^^