New tricks for old pics

I'm procrastinating in other classes, so I thought I would do a little playing around in PS. I have about 3,000 photos on an external hard drive that could use some help. To start with, I selected a photo I had worked on before with another more limited software. I took this picture of a church in Mendocino, CA with a 35mm point and shoot. Not very impressive. But a friend of mine was doing a collection of black and white photos of old churches and she really wanted an improved copy of this.

I scanned it into my computer so it's not the best quality to begin with. The brightness/contrast is all wrong. Every time I tried to adjust it I lost details - either the cross on the top blew out to white, or the door and windows lost all the detail in a void of black. So instead of just trying the auto adjustments, I used levels and curves to mend the contrast without losing the details. My friend likes sepia, so I went a little brown instead of gray. I've still got to figure out what to do with the sky. But considering my previous attempts (which I'm too embarrassed to show) this is a definite improvement. Old first, then the new.