We have a new hole.

Some background for those of you that aren't familiar with our place...

Our house is known in the neighborhood as "the orphanage". We understand the first structure built on the property was an orphanage, and the date was somewhere between 1908 and 1912. Within a few years, we think that there was a fire at the orphanage that did significant damage to it...or completely destroyed it. The house we live in was build either adjacent to or attached to the original building. We're really not sure at this point the relationship between the two buildings. The original orphanage is not here anymore. But a look at the photo on the top of our blog will show the remnants of the original building's walls. When it is very dry, the grass over these walls dries up quickly, and gets very brown. Notice the brown stripes in the front yard in that photo.

We have had chipmunks (we think) accessing the interior walls of our house over the first year we have lived here. I determined that this is where they are getting...so began to explore their entrance and decide how to prevent their visits.

A bit of digging the first day revealed what looks like the top of a doorway extending from the basement of our existing house into the foundation of the basement of the other adjacent building (not there anymore). More digging revealed that this wall had been filled with large stones (1-2 ft in diameter) with mortar between them. But mortar in the early 1900s had little adhesive, and left the current wall very crumbly. As a result, as we begin to explore the wall, there may be lots of opening up to do.


The chipmunks can now invite their large friends. I've made the hole much larger via initial exploration. But soon we'll make our hole bigger, and then much smaller!

This is about 5 feet wide at this point.

Stay tuned for concrete to go into the hole!