I have begun a little Construction Girl revival in my attic.

After getting a contractor’s bid on upgrading my attic insulation, I decided to consider doing it myself. My twenty year old house has a mere six inches of insulation, which was to code at the time. Now the standard is 15 inches. We are cold.

I needed nine more inches and Mark was happy to volunteer.

The first order of business is clearing the attic floor, no small task. I hadn’t realized how personal that would be. I hadn’t thought of what Mark might learn about me by helping me organize and purge my attic. It was personal archeology. Why did I save that?

We went to the hardware store for supplies to build shelves in the rafters to get some of the residential clutter permanently off the floor. Before too long, we were screwing in the attic.

There are so many variables when screwing, even on a fairly simple project like ours. Even if, in theory, each shelf was identical, no two screws are alike. One board is curved. One screw gets stuck in a knot hole. I got a minor injury when I didn’t bother with the proper protective precautions. And the angles had to be adjusted to make sure everything came out level. One screw in the wrong place could send years of my collection crashing through the ceiling.

But you guys already know this.

Mark and I have reached a serious point of commitment in our relationship: we mixed our tools into one toolbox. Between us, we have quite an impressive collection.