Structural questions

After having a structural engineer and a foundation contractor both look at the lean of the building, I don't have all the answers. The structural engineer said that I should underpin the foundation (which would cost around $18,000) to fix the lean. It would entail driving telescoping piers downward in the interior of my basement and then hydraulically lifting the western wall back to level and then pouring concrete in the gap that formed in the stone foundation. The contractor said it would be a waste of money to underpin because the stone foundation that the concrete sits on could continue to move afterwards. He said since the lean isn't that bad that I should build a second interior wall to take the load off the masonry structure by pouring footings on the interior of the basement and using steel beams to raise the floors back to level, extending upwards to other floors as necessary. He said it would be cheaper, but didn't give a price.

After giving this whole construction project some more thought, my partner and I are going to hire a general contractor to run the project and make it a smoother process towards applying for financing. Using this as out first real project of this magnitude would have been a bigger hurdle towards receiving funding.