AMENDMENT!

we CAN use the fireplace!

we got the inspection report from the company today
and that tiny little print says, "you meet somethingo-or-other-very-important-number standards and you CAN use your chimney despite some small mortor cracks."

-- ok so that was a paraphrase instead of a quote, but you get what i'm saying. hooray!

and we have the tree guy coming out friday who will remove the tree we wanted and merely prune the other tree because we all decided that would fix the problem, so we're much closer to budget :)

thanks to my parents for the awesome presents of those two fixes and to God for making it all come out ok in the end.