The unfortunate part of living in the great house that we currently live in, our 'forever house' as some people say, is that we continue to have problems with the grumpy old man that lives next door. (I've got to add that the neighbours on the other side are fab - 'Hey Andrew and Linda!')
It all began with a disagreement over the back fence. We used to have a hip high, galvanised mesh fence. One that you'd probably be more likely to see at the front of a house. With three small kids to watch over and bushland with a small cliff off the back of our property, I didn't think this was a suitable fence to protect my little ones. The grumpy old man next door didn't agree. He raised four young children in the 1960's with no fence to keep them in, and they were fine, so we should be fine with this too.
Ummmm, no. We were not fine with the fence. So offered to build a new one of his choice free of charge! He did not agree to this offer, and proceeded to lecture (read: yell) at both of us about our parenting choices. Bad idea. We told him we didn't need to get parenting advice from him, and that a fence would be built whether he liked it or not.
We built the fence on our side of the property.
Since then, things are gotten worse. He's rude to the kids when they say hello, he throws rubbish onto our property if it's blown into his yard and he's just generally horrible, horrible, horrible! A real old troll. His wife is lovely though and always apologises for his rotten behaviour, but that's not enough.
We try to be the bigger people and not make matters worse, but it's bloody hard.
Today, he has some men building a small brick wall on his side of the front boundary to stop any water run off from our property trickling onto his. We offered to put in drainage for him on our driveway to stop it. This was not suitable.
Seriously, God made the land many years before we got here and he made it slope down. Our house was built here over 60 years ago and the driveway has been there just as long. We have been here two years and it's not our fault!
So, the men are working on his brick wall and possibly ruining the lovely wisteria that grows on the small boundary fence giving us both a little extra privacy.
Image via
But we're just not like that.
Oh see we live in a street which is mainly military or public service, every December & January at least half the street moves & i'm the ONLY stay at home mummy in the street, so why bother?? We're all polite & friendly but i honestly think 90% of the houses are rented (like all the Army houses) & when you rent, i don't think you often care. We have very noisey children over our back fence (our 4 children are noisey but not in a screaming, crying, sibling fighting kind of nasty way) which drives me bonkers & they are ALWAYS right on our back fence at all hours being very loud. They also jump on their trampoline & look over, annoy our dog & scream at the top of their lungs. I can not wait to move onto 100 acres where we can not see or hear any neighbours, but well be country so we'll be friendly.
ReplyDeleteWe used to live in a cul-de-sac on an Air Force Base in Darwin & there were 20 children from the 8 houses, they'd all walk to school together, we were all friendly mummies, it was awesome, but not repeated. We'd share mangoes, BBQs, a street slip & slide, it was such a wonderful dose of family & community life. We had huge gardens & all manner of children over all the time, they never came inside so i didn't mind who was down there. Cyclone fencing makes for very open living, you can see who is hanging out washing 4 houses down, but we weren't in each other's pockets, it was great.
Good luck with your neighbour, you clearly are the reasonable ones. Love Posie
give me your address, and I will come egg his house, being sure to get an egg or two on your house so he won't be suspicious!! Any irritation you feel cleaning up your eggs will be overshadowed by watching him clean off his! Seriously, this sucks, and I have no good advice to give. Hang in there??
ReplyDeleteI have told you about our neighbours Christy. We are on a corner block with the neighbours from the side street overlooking our back yard. Socialising in the backyard over summer is 'interesting' with the neighbours kids sticking up their fingers and flashing their backsides at our visitors. CHARMING.
ReplyDeleteSo sorry to hear about your neighbor troubles. But I must say I had a good chuckle over the comments. My fathers advice would be to kill him with kindness. But I think egging his house souds like so much more fun! Hang in there : )
ReplyDeleteAre you living in my old house? I am sure you must be as your neighbour sounds like my old neighbour. We fell out over the fence. There was no boundary fence when we moved in. He didn't want us to put one up as it worked for the old owners. We wanted a fence as we had two dogs and wanted to keep them on our property. How you described his behaviour, add his plus throw a 60 year old wife in as well. 3 years of crap.
ReplyDeleteOoh, that's hard! We are friends with one of our neighbors (I went to school with the husband,) but the others? I don't even know how many people live there, it seems to be a mom and her brood of grown children. I've had to call the cops for loud screaming and banging more than once! They also broke our fence last year, and have yet to repair it... I think they may be getting a bill soon! Our houses are very close together, hard to miss anything.
ReplyDeleteSo you have my sympathy - I think everyone has a bad neighbor at some point!
Thank god for Sharon, Linda & Andrew!
ReplyDeleteI am very fortunate to have wonderful neighbours but can imagine how hard and frustrating it is for you. Maybe put some retirement village brochures into his letterbox!
Ha! I was going to leave a comment describing my cranky old male neighbour - until I read about some of the others! Mine is sooo tame in comparison :) Hang in there, maybe they will move up to Port Macquarie in the not too distant future!
ReplyDeleteI think we've all had to deal with a rubbish neighbour at one point in time but it's a shame it's in your forever house so you wont be moving on anytime soon. I'm about to move into a new house in a few weeks time and our new house has no fences anywhere and it's a semi attached house. It should be interesting with my three girls playing outside and on their trampoline.
ReplyDeletei was reading this and it just made me laugh. we call our neighbors the poopies. when they first moved in, they left their dog outside all day and night. it was a howling barking mess. then we noticed dog poo all over our side yard. we finally caught the dog in the act and my husband confronted the neighbor. his reason for letting the dog poop on our yard? it was "community property."
ReplyDeleteWe had a nutter neighbour like this one when we were growing up... very unpleasant. Hopefully he will shuffle off to a nursing home soon and leave you in peace!
ReplyDeletePS Just posted some pics of Milla in her bonnet on the blog :)
So sorry to hear this - what a shame. We have had the shocking neighbours (swear and abuse your children behind locked doors type - but always super lovel to our faces) It was so sad to witness this and I think that I almost sent myself off to dward because of it last year. They have since moved on and so will we at the end of the year - fingers crossed that we get nice neighbours at our next posting.
ReplyDeleteWhat a cranky old man. If it interfers with the run away of water and there is an issue further down the track, he may be liable for damages. Plus if not put up properly the brick wall migh fall if water builds behind it.
ReplyDeleteHere is hoping his kids tke him away.
LOVE the photo of the mooning shrub....you were great neighbours wished you still lived next door,so it is grumpy man that has the problem,maybe you should look into making a voodoo doll and torture him....
ReplyDeleteLook on the bright side - you are likely to outlive him in your forever house. I wouldn't bother being nice anymore, do what you need to and keep the law on your side. Maybe you should've taken him to court over the fence and had it erected on the boundary, you tried to be nice and not cause trouble but that didn't make any difference. Maybe you should have more parties or take a liking to playing Run DMC very loudly.
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My neighbors fell out with us because we put up a boundary fence between our property and theirs. They said it was our priority to put up a fence and that they did not own the fence between our property and theirs. They refused to contribute toward the erecting the fence. When we erected the fence all at our cost, they became upset and withdrawn and are speaking negatively of us in the community. Now we are happy with our fence, our backyard is more private and or dogs are fenced in. We wanted to have good neighbors but because of the fence we are at odds… too bad, we have to get on with our lives.
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