Starting from the ground up! Before we could begin building up, we had to reinforce what was down below. The house was sitting on about 12 or so wood piers that were leaning or twisted, and subsequently some of the beams resting on the piers were damaged or had shifted.
The wood piers were replaced with concrete and new beams installed. As you can imagine, this was a very time-consuming and difficult task as there was not much room in the crawl space (as you can see). Deep holes were dug for each of the concrete footings and the house was jacked up to replace the beams. Multiple laser levels were used during this process.
Stairs leading to basement. The trapdoor to the basement is in what used to be the screened-in sleeping porch. This area is now a laundry/mud /sunroom.  
           (Pictured Right: Before-Stairs - original wood steps (very unsafe). This had to be replaced first if the crew were to work down there. )