Big week (+) in Detroit!

I survived another trip to Detroit and got back safe and sound to New Hampshire. man I am tired and sore, that was a lot of work in 8 days!

This was a special trip as it was also my Girlfriend Stacy's 40th Birthday and I wanted to give her a significant surprise. With this in mind I flew out on Friday June 26th at the crack of dawn and upon landing at DTW I took an Uber cab 40 miles to pickup her birthday gift. I had spent the week organizing the purchase through E-bay and I was not dissapointed in seeing it in real life. The seller was awesome and the transaction went super perfect. Stacy is a classic car professional, nut and pecifically a Ford girl so I bought her a 1964 Ford F100 Long Bed for fun and to double duty as the work truck for the business in Detroit. The truck came out of Arizona about 3 years ago and is 100% original 32K miles, other than clear coat to preserve the patina and some tastefully done linework it is untouched, I think even the shocks are original! Its badass!

This was the first part of the birthday surprise. Unfortunatley I managed to leave the clicekr for the big roll up door in NH and so when I got to the building I couldnt get in.....DOH! This idiot move led to a fairly significant adventure to go and get a new clicker from the door company and get it coded. After a lot of running about, and some shopping on the way I finally got in the building at about 3pm. At this point I set to work on hiding the truck and setting up fo rthe rest of the surprise.

Stacy got home from work at 6pm and I was just about ready......I proposed, she said yes :) I had a close friend make a super cool ring that looks just like a spiral key ring and I had it in a little velvet ring box. Attached to the ring I had 4' of blue ribbon (Stacys favorite color), so when she pulled the ring out and after she recovered a bit she pulled on the ribbon until the key for the truck pulled out from the bottom of the box. "Thats a Ford key" she exclaimed, "I wonder what it fits?" I asked and we set off in search of the stashed truck. It took longer to find than I anticipated which was awesome! her reaction on finding the truck, along with its blue bow and appropriate ice bucked with champagne and vodka in the bed was priceless. I need to edit the video still and will share some highlights at some point, but for now just a few photos.

With all that out of the way :P Time for some work, and a little play too.

Big projects for this week long trip were to finish up the new bathroom as much as possible, and repair the worst of the roof leaks/rotten timber.

The bathroom got its door installed, sheetrock, taped and set, toilet installed, sink installed and plumbing done. Primer and paint and install the first light fitting. Easy right! This was a lot of work as the ceilings are high and sheetrock is heavy, and it had to be trimmed around the roof beams, all from a tall ladder on a sloped to the drain floor.

It came out awesome and just needs some finishing touches of paint, epoxy on the floor etc.

In paralell was the roof project. The roof is 2x6" Tongue and groove boarding over wood and steel beams, with about 3 roof layers on top. Some of the 2x6 boards have rotted after many years of bad roof repairs so the goal is to replace these where needed. Actually the real goal is to stop the main leaks above the showroom so that room is watertight and can be fitted out as our temporay apartment until the whole roof is replaced.

Step one was to peel off the old roofs. Step two take out rotten timber, step 3 get reclaimed timber and put it in, Step 4 temporary new roof surface and patch leaks elsewhere. it was damned hot up on the roof.

Of course there were all sorts of other smaller projects happening but this was the bulk of the work. I am still sore!!!!!

Some more random pics of the work truck doing work etc. We also went up to Canda for Canada Day on July 1st and had a great night of fireworks on the lake (Thanks Dana) and then I hung out at RM for a day which is always fun. We went shopping at the farmers market at Eastern Market and ate some great food too.