The Saga Continues...(the crackpot was right edition)

So, do you remember this post in which I told a tale of a "crackpot", "friend", "home-inspector", "contractor-guy" that came over and told that poor young couple that our house was built very poorly. Something that I forgot to mention in that last post (mainly because it's all technical mumbo-jumbo to me) is that he also said that the span of the floor joists are too long. We all laughed at him (to ourselves, because we've never met him) and said that there was no way that he could tell that just by looking at it.

Well, as it turns out, the crackpot was right!

We started to investigate that fractured floor joist and they sent a rep from the floor joist manufacturer to inspect. His diagnosis. The entire hallway floor is failing. So, we started to do some research. Our builder had left all of their plans and the signed off inspections at the house. (I'm pretty sure they weren't supposed to do that)
Upon looking at the plans, Ryan discovered that they installed the wrong type of floor joists in the house. Most of the house is supposed to have a 210 series floor joist and there isn't a single 210 series in the entire house. Nearly the entire house is over-spanned.
Ryan calls the city inspector that signed off on the framing and says, "how did you not catch this?"
The city inspector, um, shall we say, most likely had an "accident", gets off the phone with Ryan and immediately calls the builder.
The builder calls Ryan and says to give them time to make this right.
In order to make it right at this point is to take out all of the 110 floor joists and put in what we paid for. Well, I guess in most of the house it could be anchored so it's not overspanned. But our living room is over the top of our bedroom. So, they would have to take out the entire floor/ceiling of our living room and bedroom to replace the floor joists. My thought is this, if the most traveled part of our house "the hallway" is failing after only 3 years, what is next. Also, I have been bugging Ryan to let me bring my piano home from my parents house. What would have happened if he would have let me? I should be able to bring my piano into my home without fearing to fall through the hallway floor.
Also, Ryan found a part somewhere in the house that isn't bolted down to the foundation. Lovely, so in case of an earthquake our house would fall off the foundation.
What else is wrong with this house.
Another thought has occurred to me. This same builder built most of our entire neighborhood, of which we are at the bottom of the hill. So, if they performed the same short-cuts to those houses that they did to our house. We could be in a world of hurt in any sort of earthquake situation.

So, here's the bottom line... we are searching for a good lawyer. This is something that is totally foreign to Ryan and I. But we really feel like everyone involved has a bottom to cover. And we need someone to cover ours. The builder built it wrong & the inspector didn't inspect.
They have alot to lose here and we have already lost a sale on our house due to this issue.
And now, we don't even feel right about leaving it on the market while there are such flaws with the house.
Where does this leave us?
Well, we just really don't know. Our money is quickly running out. If this issue wouldn't have come up, we would have already been living in the little house and it would have belonged to that young couple that wanted to raise a family in our home.
So, we already lost this sale due to this issue, and we have a letter from them stating that as the specific reason they backed out.

So... if anyone knows a good lawyer that is from the Portland area... let me know please!
Because we really don't know the first thing to finding a good lawyer. What I do know is that we don't have an abundance of money to give him/her up front.

There you have it, that's the gist of it. Not the ENTIRE drama unfolded, but enough to let you know what's going on!

Thank you for your prayers!