There comes a point in every DIY project where you seem to have a hundred half-finished jobs, but nothing that actually seems to be moving you forwards. We’re very much in this zone, seeming to flit from one thing to another. At some point all the half finished jobs will reach a satisfying crescendo, but we’re not there yet.

This week, the contractors, paid for by the grant, started installing the batons for the insulation. Seeing how many have gone in, needing to be screwed directly into the wall we’re very glad someone else is helping out with it.

Mostly, we arrive to find the contractors gone, with a little more work completed, our mysterious helpers appearing and disappearing like the shoemakers elves. Yet sometimes they do leave behind mysterious signs…

As well as apparently gifting us our first wall art, our contractors have a clear preference for one particular brand of energy drink. Maybe that’s what we’re missing to help us through our DIY slumps.

Although we very much enjoy watching other people work for a change, we’ve also been getting on with many of the half-started jobs around the house. From more grouting to yet more braces, it’s been a bitty few evenings and weekend.

The one big job we’ve managed to get on to is replacing the old rotten wooden joists with the dining room and kitchen. To remove the joists we had the choice of taking up the floorboards and replacing the beams from above, or cutting them out to remove them from below. We are keen to save our wooden floorboards and weren’t sure they would survive the upheaval. So instead, we decided on the more difficult route.

Around half the beams need replacing, either because of rot or wood worm. Removal meant sawing through the beam at either end and prising the beam off the nails holding it to the floorboards above. These old square cut nails then had to be hammered up back through the floorboards to be pulled out.

The two remaining ends were removed from the walls, a delicate processes involving serious abuse with a crowbar. All this had seemed exhausting enough for one day, but we didn’t want to leave a series of floorboards trapdoors for the contractors to find. So then it came down to measuring, cutting and treating the new joist, before manhandling it in to place. Amazingly, we were able to reuse the old nails we had pulled out of the original beam, as they had survived our mishandling amazingly well.

All this done we congratulated ourselves on our first beam successfully replaced, carefully avoiding a sideways glance at the seven more to go. Maybe it really is time to stock up on red bull?