2 steps forward, 16 steps back

It's been one of those days around here...
James put his HVAC knowledge to work today, re-routing ducting around an upcoming joist.  Early in the morning, it looked like things were going to go quickly.  He measured, got the pieces together, and hoisted it into place...

But then,  he moved it into place and something popped apart -- a joint, which was not supposed to come apart.  Awesome...

After we fixed that (and I do mean "we" -- it took both of us working like crazy!), we put it back up and then IT HAPPENED AGAIN...

At this point, we're just peachy, but with some patience and teamwork, we got it into place, all the way to the vent.

So, next up was putting in the joist, BUT when we got it in place, we realized we had failed to notice that the WALL was MISSING where the joist was supposed to sit.  That's right, the joist was sitting only on sheet rock. For some UNKNOWN reason, the framers had left a gap in the walls and then covered it with sheet rock. Awesome.  So, James had to cut into our sheet rock and complete the wall...

What a man...  By the end of the day, 5 joists were in place.  And we went on a DATE!!  The perfect ending to a rather stressful day!

Aren't they pretty???

(a note: these joists are 18 feet long, but the pictures only show about 4 feet of them!)