Mid-Week Poll - Chimney Drama

So, my grandparents from Alaska are in town. My grandpa is a builder and fix-it man, and can fix anything and everything. So, upon seeing our fixer-upper, he threw out a few suggestions for my mom to consider. Namely, removing the big cinder block chimney that goes up through the center of the house. My mom says yes to this idea. I say no.

There are pros and cons to this scenario. First, the pros...

1. It would give us a bit of extra space in the kitchen pantry and a bit of extra space in the upstairs hallway.
2. The chimney serves absolutely no purpose anymore, and if someone were to ever take it out, now would be the time as we are putting on a new roof and putting up new sheetrock everywhere.
3. It would be less of a liability later. Eventually the chimney will deteriote and need taken down...but it's probably 100-years from deterioting to that point.

Now, the cons...

1. We would need to remove a cinderblock chimney. Remember back in college when you carried a mere four cinderblocks 2 flights up the stairs to your college dorm room to set your bed on? I do...it sucked. I can't even imagine how miserable it would be to take down a two-story solid cinderblock chimney. First just getting the cinderblocks apart, then hauling them outside, then hauling them up to the muddy dump, then unloading them into the dump!? It would be miserable.
2. I don't think it will affect the sale price at all. Chimney or no chimney, no one is going to notice or care. So, we will get the same price for the house, but will have done an enormous amount of hard, manual labor.  I'm not interested in working my tail off for no good reason.
3. The demolition crew would consist of me and my mom. My grandma and grandpa would want to help, but they aren't exactly spring chickens. While my mom apparently has a death wish for them, I, for one, do not!

Now for some pictures of the possibly afftected areas:

On the far left of this picture, to the left of the pantry doorway is the chimney location. Removing the chimney would make that pantry area larger...which would then probably warrant the removal of the dividing wall, which would in turn warrant the removal of the archway. It would be quite the can of worms...and would that extra open space add any value? It is a flip, afterall. It is perfectly functional as it is.  

 The bookshelf on the right is hiding the chimney. Removing the chimney would remove that cute book shelf, and create more space in the already spacious hallway.

So, what do you think? If this were YOUR flip, would you undertake this monster of a job? We need your opinion ASAP...before my mom and grandpa over-ride all reason and just start demolishing the chimney, which they may have already done!? But honestly, what do you think? Leave the chimney? Or take it out? The poll is on the top-left sidebar. I'm leaving it up to you...