The other day, I sat at my desk near the front of the house and realized something was different. It took me a moment to know what it was–it was quiet. It was glorious peace after days of listening to a jack hammer drilling into concrete and a back hoe digging a trench.

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This was the beginning of the new porch wall. We had hoped to use the existing foundation, but it didn’t come close to meeting code. We prefer to know that our new porch will stand because it has a firm foundation. For this phase of the project, it’s “out with the old, in with the new.”

Digging a trench seems so simple, but it was a massive project. The old foundation needed to be dug up and removed. The foundation consisted of poured cement on top. Below that was a mass of old bricks and stone and there were a few tree roots thrown into the mix.

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Once the old foundation was removed, they kept on digging to get to the required depth. That left us with a huge pile of dirt in the front of our house. We’ve never had the most appealing front yard, but now it is a mess! My daughter says that it looks like “an archeological dig in the middle of a war zone.”

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This next set of photos shows the progression of the project. In the last blog, I showed you the tear down of the remaining porch structure. Here you can see the trench and the rebar that was placed at the bottom.

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The whole thing needed to be inspected to ensure that we dug deep enough below the frostline. Then it was ready for the poured cement foundation. The photos can show you the progression far better than I can describe it in words.

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Once the cement dried, they began to lay the new block foundation. Now, you can begin to see the future structure of the porch.

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Guess what’s next? Here’s a clue.

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