Taking a page from one of my childhood books by Remy Charlip (pun intended), our discoveries last week with the structural engineer can best be described taking a ‘Fortunately, Unfortunately’ approach.
Fortunately, we learned that the work needed in the basement will not be as extensive as we originally thought. While we thought we would have to do some extensive underpinning to straighten out the floor and lower it enough to get the furnace in, turns out we can do a curb around the perimeter and just lower the middle. That we can handle with lots of buckets and willpower. I could make this exercise one in my new year’s resolution to get more fit.
Unfortunately, the bell tower is a bit more tricky. There is a foreboding crack in the front that has to be addressed, and by someone with more skills than us. 
It may come down to setting the bell tower roof on the ground (anyone have a crane they could loan us?) while the blocks are repaired. The good thing about that is it’s much easier to re-roof at that level!
Fortunately, there is also a simple answer for the sagging roof. He reports it’s not in terrible shape, b
ut will of course continue to sag if we don’t do something.
Unfortunately, that might also mean pulling off what is there and re-building the roof. Actually, we have 3 options; we just need to sort out which one might be the best. Next steps will be to get a ‘truss-guy’ in to take a look. Kevin tells me that’s a real person, I have my doubts. How does one get to be a truss-guy? But anyway, having a next step is very promising.
Last but Fortunately not least, the over-all structure is ‘pretty good’. Tuckpointing needed – but we knew that already. Flooring needs shored up – knew that too. But altogether do-able. And that is exactly what we’ve been hoping to hear.
OK everyone – grab a bucket, let’s start digging!
(and as a caveat to the theme….if you noticed that Unfortunately the website was down for a week or so – Fortunately I got it fixed without too much angst. The joys of changing email addresses!)