Back to sharing my home with tools and David

It was so great to take the summer and early fall off from renovation but I've decided to go for the mad dash of completing the steeple before winter. Here's the hole in the office loft roof where the steeple once was:

If you stand directly beneath it, it looks like this:

It's a four by four footprint; the base will be eight feet tall and the steeple/spire will be another 6' or 8'.
I want to make sure that the structure looks like the church that it once was and not a schoolhouse.
I'm drawing a lot of possibilities and will have to come to some conclusion by Wednesday. I've ordered the two windows for the north and south sides; David contributed a window for the east side and I'm going to find a louver, maybe octagonal or chapel style for the west side; the side that faces the street.
David has already blocked off the area; it always reminds me of preparing for surgery:

My big task this weekend was dealing with the office loft staircase. Last weekend, I stained the treads:

This weekend, I stained the side tread ebony and painted the north side and risers high gloss white.
It was a ton of taping and working on stairs is always tricky but I do like the way it came out. David had the handrail milled and I oiled it hoping that it will get darker like the counters. People who know wood say it will. I also painted the twenty eight spindles that will go up this week and I'll have a finished staircase. This morning before I hopped the train, I laid down a nice thin coat of fast drying poly.

My deck is covered with leaves. I took the leaf blower to it in the morning and it looked even worse by the end of the day. That is the price I have to pay for this view when I lie down on the deck and look up:

And then, if that's not enough, there's always the mighty Hudson river: