Mending Fences And Not Mending Fences

A few years ago, I was building a new fence for a friend of mine. First, I had to remove the old sections that were falling apart, of course, and when I got to the intersection of his back fence, his side fence, and the next-door neighbor’s back fence, I carefully separated the neighbor’s fence from his and proceeded to carry on removing the side sections that went between their two properties.

My friend had told me that the side section was 100% on his property and that the previous owner (over thirty years ago) had deliberately given the next-door neighbor’s property an extra foot or so to ensure that he was building on his own property (without calling for and paying for a survey).

The neighbor came running outside screaming at me.

Neighbor: “You can’t remove that fence! That’s our property! Just what do you think you’re doing?!”

Me: *Very calmly* “[Friend] told you well in advance that he was going to replace this fence and that he was just going to build it in the same place as the old one. He asked you if you were willing to split the costs, and you declined.”

No biggie.

[Neighbor] started screaming at me again.

Neighbor: “You have no right to do that! [Friend] didn’t give us proper notice! I didn’t realize that there wouldn’t be anything between our two properties to contain my dog!”

By then, I was about ready to lose my s***, so I knocked on [Friend]’s back door to let him know what was going on.

Me: “You need to talk to [Neighbor]. I’m leaving because I don’t want to do or say anything I’ll regret, and I don’t want to cause you problems with the neighbors.”

The entire project got put on hold, pending a property survey that was going to cost $650, and that they demanded my friend pay half of, despite him telling them that the fence was definitely on his property, and nothing was going to change with the new fence, and that he was fine with them continuing to have a foot or so of his property, so that he didn’t have to rock the boat.

Fast forward to the following Monday when the surveyor came out. It turned out that the old side fence was not “a little” on [Friend]’s property, but ALMOST TEN FEET onto his property. The neighbors had built up raised flower beds and done a nice brick retaining wall right up along the fence line, which they had spent a lot of money just in materials for, never mind the time they put in constructing it.

Needless to say, [Friend] came away with the biggest s***-eating grin. For the mere price of $325, he was entitled to expand his yard of more than thirty years by about 800 square feet. And [Neighbor] and her husband (who happened to be the polar opposite of his wife in personality and was super nice) spent the next week moving their garden, retaining wall, and all of the dirt that was on [Friend]’s property so that I could build the fence on his side of the ACTUAL property line.

The neighbors then hired the cheapest contractors they could find to slap up a fence on their side of the property line. They spent almost as much as my friend did on their new fence. (I gave my friend the friends and family discount.)

Three years later, the last twenty feet or so of their fence is on the ground already because it was such a s***ty job that it fell over in a moderate wind storm this past spring. [Friend]’s fence is still standing, rock solid, and his dogs are definitely making good use of the extra 800 square feet.