Sunday, November 04, 2007

The Fence Saga Continues...

Sunday morning we decided to finish putting up our fence only to discover that someone (presumably the neighbors) had pulled up our 3 fence posts and had thrown them back into our yard. Aww no they di-'int! These posts had been clearly on our property, so we started driving the posts back into the holes. Yes... I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that "push" has finally come to "shove".

Here's the history:
Todd came over to help us with our fence project - blitzkrieg style! We were determined to get the fence up today. So we took turns driving the fence posts in with the sledgehammer until we ran out of available poles, and then we dismantled the remaining dog-run fence sections and took turns digging up the posts.

Once we had all the poles up between our yard and the neighbors, we started putting up the chain-link fencing. At one point the neighbors (who were busy moving in today) came home and questioned the property boundaries in regards to our fence posts, and tried yet again to convince us that we were not allowed to put the fence up period. Our fence is within a 6-8 inch margin of error on our side of the plum line (running between surveyor markers), so we are safely on our own property.

After lunch we continued driving the remaining fence posts along the rest of our lower property line, and Jane11 & Er!c finished up the chain-link fencing after Todd left to watch a race on TV. Thanks very very much Todd for all your hard work today! It would have taken so much longer without your help!!! :)

As we were cleaning up the mess we'd made in our yard, the neighbors pulled up again and Mr. Neighbor immediately came over to our fence and started complaining about the irregular heights of the fence posts. Er!c told him that this was the first day and that we weren't finished with the fence yet. When asked about the fence posts the neighbor said that the developer had pulled them up... Oh really!?

Mr. Neighbor then noticed the "Private Property - Keep Out" sign on one of our trees and ordered us to take it down! "Take that sign down! Take it down right now!" Er!c let him know that this IS our property and that we'd appreciate it if he didn't tell us what we're allowed to do on our property.

We sort of feel bad posting a Keep Out sign (obviously directed at them), but we can't really trust them anymore. They don't seem to respect our yard or our wishes for a fence. They have each lied to us on multiple occasions and have destroyed & tampered with our property again and again.

Update: We took down the sign Tuesday evening.

Then, because we were worried that they might try and tare down our fence again, Er!c let them know that if they do tamper with our fence again we WILL call the police. Mr. Neighbor then said that we still were not allowed to have a fence and that we should call his developer and find out for ourselves.

So we decided that we would call the developer and let him know what's been going on, and get a 3rd party involved. We found his number and gave him a call. He picked up and Er!c told him the whole story -- about how the neighbors had destroyed about 300 sq feet of our woods and then wouldn't agree to put up a fence (after agreeing to put up a fence), and how they had removed our fence posts, and told us that the developer wouldn't allow us to put up our own fence, etc...

The developer said, "They pulled up your fence posts?! They can't do that! That's YOUR property! You can obviously do whatever you want on your own property." He then said that he'd give them a call tomorrow and let them know that they can put a privacy fence up along our property line (if they want). Woohoo!!! So at least we now have their developer on our side too!

So hopefully this will be the end of our fence troubles with those neighbors. It's a shame that things went the way they did... Perhaps someday soon (when this whole fence issue dies down) we can work on being good neighbors again.

*sigh*
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