Stair construction

After my agonizingly slow updates on the main floor to basement stair building, I can now report that the stairs are finally built!   Maybe a particularly welcome bit of news to everyone who found the temporary stairs to be wobbly and frightening?   We attempted to do finish carpentry stair building and as a result have ended up with a sturdy, square and building code compliant version that is paintable but not exactly at precision furniture grade.  If I checked one more stair tread with the level, I hesitate to think what Bob would have done with me and the level....    Suffice to say that we are within a sixteenth of an inch tolerance in both vertical and horizontal planes.   Not bad for having salvaged and ripped much of the two inch thick spruce from earlier construction activities!  George (the cat) found the removal of the temporary stairs and installation of the stringers to be quite exciting.   He was initially relegated to the basement with the other two cats, because that is where the cat litter is located.   He was having no part of missing out on the action and insisted on climbing up up the bare stringers (first photo) and climbing around the stairwell opening to see what we were doing.  He is also aware that the cat food is located upstairs, clearly his priority.  This first photo is of the in-progress installation.  

Harley the Wonder Dog is shown with the completed stairs.   I have put filler in the screw holes, next up is to sand and paint them.    When we had about half of the stair treads in place, Harley tried to sneak upstairs, only to find that he was on a bit of a stairway to heaven with imaginary upper steps.   He beat a retreat and was wary about trying them again when we insisted to him that they were finished.   I demonstrated by descending and ascending first so that he would see that it was safe, now he has resumed trusting this route.