House restoration: front stairs

I was reluctant to deal with front stairs because I remembered the pain of assembling it the first time. I had completely forgotten that I had repaired it once before, after an attack by wild beasts. It gave me courage, and I took out the broken parts for inspection.

I also remembered that the stairs had been broken once again before the removal so I cannot blame the movers for this particular damage. The pieces had been packed in a moving box.

A couple of steps were missing.

I found one, and I believe I saw another one somewhere so I will probably find it among my supplies three years from now, but it is easy to make a new one.

Doing it a third time made me more confident.

What I did this time was enforce the seams with filler, just to make the whole structure more stable. As I have mentioned before, there is a major flaw in this design because the front stairs must be removed every time the fronts are opened. I have considered getting rid of the stairs altogether, but they do add a nice feature. So it's a matter of making them solid.

If you wonder why I haven't removed the LED light and battery - it is the only light still working. Probably because it traveled packed in a box.

I had to cheat slightly with the upper rail, but I did it the first and the second time as well. Filler is useful.

But at this point I once again decided that the back arch was unnecessary. The structure seems stable.

So all I did was add the horse heads. One was lost, but fortunately I had a spare.

I think the horse heads add an interesting feature to the facade.

Now I need to figure out a smart cat-proof way of attaching the stairs for easy removing. Maybe velcro?