The work is complete! This is the new foundation under the kitchen, pantry, and back porch. You can see a couple of thermostatically controlled vents in the photo. All in all, things seem much sturdier back there. Unfortunately we'll have to replant that flower bed and get some grass growing there again, but the floor isn't quite so slopey anymore.

Here's some of the foundation work that's been going on. You can see where holes were made in the existing stone foundation, then concrete footers were poured. After the concrete cures, jacks will be put in to hold up the house so the rest of the foundation can be removed. Then I assume more concrete will be poured and the foundation reconstructed so the jacks can be removed. We hear from the contractors that they've yet to find anything exciting down there other than a bunch of big stones and no real indicators of the age of this section of the house.

This has been the unusual view out our kitchen window for about the past week. As I mentioned earlier, we are having some foundation work done. They're removing sections of the existing stone foundation of the backmost portion of the house. We have no idea when this section was added to the house, but it's certainly not vintage 1866 like the rest of the house. After removing portions of the foundation, this section will be lifted on jacks, the rest of the foundation for this area will then be removed, concrete footers will be poured and a new foundation will be constructed. This should lay the groundwork, so to speak, for us to move forward with some work on the pantry and possibly the kitchen.

More flowers. This is a bunch of freshly cut peonies. I cut these because, unfortunately I had to move the plants as we are having some foundation work done on the back of the house to prop up the kitchen, pantry and back entry floor (pictures of that to come later). According to the article linked to here, peonies don't like to be moved (I believe it, the plants are looking very sad right now) and may not bloom again for years. That's a darn shame. We have a number of peony bushes, but most of them are the dark pink later blooming variety. Don't get me wrong, those are pretty too, but it's nice to have the variety.