Because the chimney stack was attached to the collapsed wall, that had to go as well. Modern building codes are pretty strict so the stack would have to be lined before any sort of wood burning stove was used and an open fire would have been completely out of the question.
On the positive side, the chimney stack did divide the room a bit, so so now with it’s removal we don’t have to worry about trying to find furniture of the right size to fit either side of it.
By the way the thick rods you see to the left of the last image are our sash weights. I can’t wait until we get to that granular level of fixing the place up.
I have some time lapse footage of the wall demolition, but the power line to the camera was severed somehow, hence the short video.