Jo Chapin had lived at 337 W. Eighth St. in Lorain for 27 years when the house was struck and nearly crushed by a falling tree in April.
On Aug. 25, Chapin and her husband, Chris, finally got some closure on the status of the home.
After the tree hit, the insurance company deemed the home “unsalvageable,” Jo Chapin said, due to a lack of structural integrity.
“(We’ve been) waiting … the insurance had to go through and, you know, take all the stuff from the inside, put it in storage,” Chris Chapin said. “They determined it wasn’t fixable for the cap on the insurance payout, and we certainly weren’t going to fix it.”
The process from April 1 until now has been a lengthy one, he said.
But with the demolition project now complete, the couple can start looking to build a new home.
Don Buchs, owner of All American Demolition, handled the duties of tearing down the century-old house.
Ironically, the storm from Aug. 23 delayed the demolition, Buchs said.
The Chapins plan to build a new home.
Chris Chapin said that if nothing else, the demolition has allowed them to close the book on that chapter of their lives.
In a way, it was a blessing in disguise, he said.
“I don’t have the emotional attachment (to the house) she does,” Chris Chapin said. “But we wanted to move anyway.
“It’s disruptive, but yeah, it definitely helped us move out.”
Jo Chapin, however, tells a different story.
As the longest-tenured resident of the house, she said she was distraught to see her home of nearly three decades go down.
“I’ve been living here 27 years, almost 28 years, so I was hoping that they’d be able to fix it,” Jo Chapin said. “(But) it wasn’t structurally sound.
“We’re going to actually build a house because there’s no houses for sale.”
Most of the items inside the house were saved, Jo Chapin said, and many will go to the new home.
“Most of everything got saved,” she said. “It had three floors and the third floor kind of got the brunt of it, and my daughter’s room was the bedroom on the second floor that took the biggest hit, so most of her stuff was not salvageable.
“(Mostly) everything in the house, they were able to come and take out.”
