I appreciate the comments as always!
I just got back from another round of corrosion hunting, and I found my fair share of skeletons this time. It certainly won't help the "for" case, by any means. I completely removed the carpet and found the floor pan roughly painted black, corrosion under the fuel shutoff placard, more corrosion on the pan around the fuel shutoff valve, and a nice crack in the seat pan on the passenger's side. I pulled the wingtips, and everything looks really good inside the wings given the condition of everything else, other than the damaged right wingtip that is.
With the 152 market appearing in the 35-40k range, I thought I might have a chance to invest something a little north of that and have a darn good little airplane. But everywhere I look it's more $$$, and that's just what I see. I think I gave it a valiant effort to save the aircraft I trained in, but unfortunately I think this one might be too far gone at this point...