The $8000 house and the back porch it gave up on. Part 1

The next project on the house was the back porch, and it was in rough shape. It had settled so much that it was barely holding together.
As I started tearing it apart, I found old newspapers stuffed under the floorboards as insulation. The floor joists spanned the entire porch and had been loosely sistered together at some point, but there were no supports underneath to carry the load. It was no wonder the porch had sagged over the years.
My father-in-law and I decided to tackle the foundation first. We built forms and poured a new, level cap on top of the existing foundation. After that, we built a new rim joist and slowly jacked the porch up, taking our time so we didn’t damage anything. Once it was level, we carefully lowered it onto the new rim joist.
To help keep everything from twisting, I also installed 2×6 braces running wall to wall.
This was just the first phase of the repair, but getting the porch level and properly supported gave us a solid foundation to keep moving forward.
Has anyone else uncovered old newspapers in the walls or floors of an old house? It’s always interesting seeing what previous owners used decades ago.