Cribbing
To prepare for the lift the crew spent a week doing a lot of digging and grunt work under the house, and making stacks
of timbers called "cribbing." Three big steel I-beams will rest on these cribbing piles. While the house is being lifted there will be guys down there building up the stacks with more timbers as it goes up. Then the house will sit on the beams and cribbing piles until the new foundation is in place.
In the first couple pictures you can see the kitchen addition sticking out at the back of the house. The basement does not yet extend under it, but it will. We are also going to add another first floor room in the vacant area to the left of the kitchen, which will make the house rectangular again. The basement will be enlarged to extend under this whole area, all the way to the outside wall.

The old furnace still worked great, but we knew we would have to replace it because it needed
a chimney, which had to be removed to make room for stairways. So my wife put the furnace up for sale on EBay and it sold for $200 in a couple of days. She specified local pickup only, and some guy came and got it. Should give him a few more years of trouble-free heating. I was skeptical of the idea of selling something like that on EBay, but it worked out great for us and the buyer. You never know until you try.
More pictures...