The state of the fence. The portion that is fallen is shared with Crazy Lady. It's 23' of the 71' of total length of our backyard fence.
The remaining 48' of fence, shared with "The Loonies". Straight, eh?
This 2x4 was held in by ONE nail, and was supposed to be helping keep the fence up.
This was our "view" for far too long :( Our next-door neighbors cut down the large trees you see. They dropped massive amounts of leaves and berries, so we were happy to see them go. Crazy Lady lives in the green house.
Getting out some aggression with power tools.
The Posts, shared with The Loonies, pulling away from the concrete by about 2.5".
The post you see standing in the foreground was put up by The Loonies and was holding the fence in the VERY crooked line you saw earlier. They bolted them to the existing posts and did nothing to help straighten the line. Jason is telling us how he really feels. ;)
Rotten kickboards from The Loonies portion of the fence. The lattice that my father-in-law put up years ago to help with the integirty of the fence basically crumbled in our hands.
My dad and Jason workin' the Power Auger.
Boy, I sure had alot of aggression to get out... this time I took it out on the massive cement block. I just visualized Crazy Lady's face ;)
Our awesome neighbor, Lynda, watched Faith while Jason and I finished pouring the concrete into the post holes. They picked flowers. Faith was great during the entire process.Somewhere around this time was when Crazy Lady came out to yell at us. She claimed she had slept through our working in the backyard (9am-5pm!) even though we were using the VERY loud Power Auger, our neighbor was using his chainsaw, and her bedroom is in the back of the house (with single pane windows, I might add). She confronted us when we were pouring the last of our concrete in the last of the post holes... 17 of them. Great timing.
About 30 minutes later, the cops were at the door. To make a long story (ok, bitch-session) short, we attempted to talk to her via email (so we had records of everything she told us) to resolve the situation. It didn't work. That's because, as her name suggests, she's crazy.
The set posts. We ended up having to reset 4 of them because they weren't exactly in a straight line. Also, the post at the very corner was an issue because...
... we set it closer to Crazy Lady's house. You can see where the old fence post was, and the new post was set about 3 inches towards her house.
She sent her son out in the pouring rain to take pictures of the fence line (while barking orders from inside the house), even though we told her it would be removed and reset closer to our property. Ummm...is he on our property? I thought so...
Here is the new post set at the corner shared with Crazy Lady. You can now see the old fence line is on HER side, and the new fencepost is on ours.We ended up bringing my Father-in-Law down from Washington to help us and lucky us, his 2 best friends each gave us a hand in some part of the backyard project!
While we were re-setting the post, she came out and said "I am going to tell you one time to get off my property". My Father-in-law, who was holding the post upright, and was on her side of the property line, said, "I'll get off when I am done with what I am doing". Less than 2 minutes later, he made good on his word, but not before she called the cops on us AGAIN.
There were 2 cops that showed up. One stayed to talk to Crazy Lady, the other came to talk to us. The one that came to talk to us said "I have no idea why we are here. We keep telling her there is no violation here". It felt so good to hear someone besides Jason say that! :) Apparently, Crazy Lady has called the cops on a few of her neighbors for various things. Can we say, "Cry Wolf"?
We even made preggo Auntie Lizz work :) She loves powertools as much as me!
The last few boards going up...
Can't you see the relief on Jason's face? We did the "good neighbor" fence with our cool neighbors, but we took the "pretty side" for the entire backyard span since we paid for it.
DONE!
Yes, I hugged the fence...
And this is our new "view". Our Cool Neighbor will be taking the debris to the dump for us as "payment" for the labor of putting up the fence we share.Of course, I'd like to thank EVERYONE that helped with this project! It was a long road for us, but we feel so blessed to have friends like you!
In no particular order...
- Eddie, Amanda, and Nick
- Lizz, Jamie, and Spiff
- Dave, Ryan, and Ashleigh (Ann Marie also stayed housebound while we borrowed their car, so she deserves mentioning too!)
- Greg
- Tim
- Derrell
- Tony (who lent us his truck to get lumber)
- Nana and Papa
- Grandma Terralee (for telling Derrell to come down to help us)
- Our Cool Neighbors
- Concord PD (for wanting to pepper spray someone)
- The manager at Safeway who sold me a TON of beer to keep the crew happy! :)
- Crazy Lady and The Loonies (for teaching us how to deal with crappy neighbors)
