We were doing so well with our restoration until we got sent to Boise for 2 years, left a caretaker to do some odd jobs and keep the heat going in the winter, and returned August 30, 2015 to find he had gutted the place. The copper pipes to the furnace, out of the walls running to the radiators upstairs, all of the wiring we ran, appliances, tools, the back up oil furnace, and - just to ensure a toasty place in hell - 9 of our 17 radiators including all of those from the back "servants' quarters" section and from all of our kids bedrooms upstairs in the main house.

We spent the 8 weeks or so before it was too cold to have the house open, getting heat, power, and water functioning again. But finally we had to batten down for the winter and it's a wreck because there is no sub flooring, there are no ceilings in the downstairs, there are huge holes in the plaster where he tore things out of the walls. It's been a trial. And although the weather is warming up enough to be able to do some plaster work and get some ceilings up, the [I won't use that language here] who stole the rads, appears to have drained them onto the floor through the one in the main hallway. There is simply no other explanation for what we found when we returned.

There was a damp patch all around the rad in the hall. The floor, previously quite level, had begun sinking and was about ½ inch low at the worst area. Where we had previously marveled at how incredibly level the floors were for such an age, now you felt like you would fall over walking down the hall. In other words, this was a severe and very noticeable change. It wasn't something that just went unnoticed before.

Under that, through the floorboards, there was what looked like the remains of a flood under the cellar stairs. The old concrete and dirt was significantly wetter than elsewhere in the cellar, even against walls where moisture normally accumulated. Once we cleared out the cellar and put dehumidifiers down there, the area under the rad stayed wet for days beyond the rest of the cellar.

As the cellar dried out, we got some splitting in two of the beams that run under the stairs and along either side of the hall. Combined with the sinking of the floor, we were very concerned and called a structural engineer, who came out and showed us a couple of places to install supports. He says the beams are fine, it was just a function of drying out so quickly after years of damp. Eventually we want to wall off down there and have 4x4s inside the walls along both beams as supports to really stabilize it, but for now he okayed some minor measures and we are comfortable that the house isn't going to collapse or anything.

So there are three problems we are still facing, and I'm loathe to have a structural engineer out again if it's something we can do ourselves or if it's something that just isn't a big deal and you just have to learn to accept with an old house.

First: Where we jacked the beams back up maybe a ½ to ¾ of an inch, the gap running along the beam is not closing, it's remaining a gap, so the joists, notched into the beam, are not rising up level with the beam top and bringing the floorboards along. Instead we have tops of the beams up where they should be, but the tops of the joists are too low and the floor is sagging ½ to ¾ inches to the point where along the one wall I can see into the cellar though the gap between the floor and the wall.

Second: One side of the hall stairs is tied into the wall that sits on a main beam - one of those we've had to support from the cellar. The other side looks to be on just a 2x8 that holds the very floor joists that are not coming up level to the top of the beams on either side. The stairs are pulling away from the wall and sinking. Where the sides of the stairs are visible, the wood is starting to spread on the sides a little bit. The stairs themselves are solid as can be. It seems to all be related to the sinking (or rather, not coming back up into place) floor joists.

Third: There has been some spreading since installing the supports. Floor boards seem more "gappy" in places and there is a gap between the wall and the woodwork for our fireplace at the bottom that disappears toward the top, making me think the exterior wall it is on has begun to lean. This is scary to me. Is this normal or should I be back to worrying the place will collapse on us? Could the weight of the stairs pulling away from that wall as it sinks on one side be causing so many alterations in the way the house holds together?

Any advice is welcome, thanks!