Happy Kepha day Kepha.

Things are going well at the house. More on that in the next post. But I did want to take a minute out to recognize a big helper on my project and to give recognition for an unsung warrior in the restoration of this house.

Kepha my truck.

There are a lot of pickup trucks on the road. A lot of them are pretty. Not many of them carry stuff. Kepha has been daily beaten and comes back for more.

Here is a picture of me and Kepha on the day he became mine back in 2003.



At first I tried to change Kepha a lot 2" of lift, sound systems, an air intake, bed liners, a cover, heated seats, power locking tailgate, bed lights......But after a while i just started accepting him for who he was.



Over the years he has hauled and towed a lot for my family, friends, Habitat for Humanity and myself. From my brothers deck flowerbed projects, to helping my friends move, to pulling trees to ensure they don't hit houses on the way down, to moving my friends and motorcycles, and couches, and wood and all kinds of things. He has been there solid like a stone.



And then there was the time I put 3100lbs in bed (unknown to me at the time) when it's rated only for 2300lbs and still drove like a champ.

A fantastic truck. You know i work for Ford, but I'm also willing to share the times he fell short. Two unexpected rear axle seal ruptures at 67k miles caused me plenty of headache but only $12 in parts but a 4 hour tear-down and rebuild of the rear axle. Also an annoying driveshaft problem where the center bearing slides out of place has plagued me but never stranded me.

Anyhow to celebrate kepha passing 100,000k miles I wanted to share some pictures.

Bad Blogger

Sorry everyone once again for slow updates. Last we left off I was building a huge fence. that is pretty much wrapped up.

A cullmination of things has led to few blogs. Finishing up a 3 year long program at work has kept me on my toes. The next time it will be this busy again it will be 2012, so i have some time to breath.

Labor day weekend a friend and I ventured up to the Bruce Peninsula in Canada for a little R&R.

Last week Habitat for Humanity Detroit held it's annual blitz. While I didn't house lead this time (last 7 in a row i have), or even stay for the whole week, I did volunteer to crew lead for 3 days of it.

But lastly, nothing seriously significant has happend worth blogging about. I've been touching up small things here and there in the framing like missing fireblocks, screwing down subfloors and moving framing for my HVAC guy.

Although here is one project that gave me a huge headache. It's a set of steel plates seeming my ridge beam. See when you have cathedral ceilings there are no collar ties or ceiling joists to help the roofline hold it's triangular shape. Therefore you need to have a 'strutural ridgebeam' that actually 'hangs' the rafters.

When I installed this ridgebeam in January it had not even crossed my mind that I would cathedral the ceiling in this room, thus I had a split in my ridge. Anyhow to fix it took some custom steel plates that were difficult to find and some inginuity to get it into place. Anyhow it's done and i'm cool with that.



The other somewhat significant thing i've been up to is working on the finish staircase. Should finish up the structure tomorrow.




Red treads and natural risers will round out the finish.




I'll be a better blogger I promise.

oh and in other news i'm sporting a Mohawk now.