Black Railings

I am on a mission to rid my home of anything "honey oak" colored.  I would like to have re-painted our kitchen cabinets first, as their honey-oakness is the most overwhelming in the house, but a project of that scale will definitely have to wait until the basement is finished.  Stair railings, however, is a "Isaac is napping" project that I can do by myself in several short steps, when I have an hour here or there.
Here is how they have looked for the past 7 years:

I found a fabulous product called "Polyshades" which is polyurethane and color in one.  It is much thinner than paint and allows wood grain to show through, but still gives a very rich color.  I am planning to use a dark walnut colored Polyshade on our basement stair treads.  Here I went with black.  The prep for this project involved a lot of taping and plastic:

But all the prep work was really worth it.  I love the final product:

Again my photography skills are hindering me, the shadows and light make the hallway look very dark in this photo.  In person it looks beautiful, no longer like a hastily installed builder-grade railing set (which it is) but a custom made piece.  I would love, love, love to rip that carpeting off the stairs and replace them with stained wood too!!
Here's a shot from the upstairs, of our front entryway with new black railings:

All that I needed for this project was painter's tape, a brush made for oil-based paints, paint thinner (for cleaning afterwards), plastic sheeting and a can of black Polyshades.  The Polyshades was $7 and we had all of the other items already.  Plus there's still 1/3 of a can of Polyshades left, for the upstairs railing!  I did also buy a special paint-prep cleaner called TSP and scrubbed down the railings before I painted.  This was $4.50.  
My next project is not nearly as glamorous.  I need to fill all the nail holes in the basement ceiling boards with wood filler.  Hopefully I will be able to finish this by the weekend.