We're not sure how old the fence is. If it's the original fence, it's at least 20 years old. Which is why it doesn't look good, although Ike did not help matters.
We share fence with four different neighbors:
Gail on the right is a good neighbor: we never see her. Anyway, she redid the fence between her property and ours a couple of years ago. From the way she talks, it sounds like McVicker refused to pay. Sorry, Gail. But thanks for reducing our workload! This fence survived Ike just fine.
Tony and Shanna on the left...have at least 7 showdogs. The dogs are fine, since for the most part they stay inside. [It's funny, because Gail has a dog, and we have 7 - 9 dogs on the other side, and yet the only animals that we ever see belong to one of our backyard neighbors. Two cats visit us at various times. But, back on topic.] The dogs are pretty well behaved, although I've caught them wandering into the back of our property more than a few times. Along with their owners. The point being, we need this fence repaired to keep out the humans more than the animals. Although those stupid dogs did steal one of my favorite shoes that I left on the patio. In my backyard.
The back section of fence is shared with two neighbors. The neighbor on the right is Rob, a nice enough fellow. He priced out what it would cost to redo the 50 feet of fence we share, and asked us a few weeks ago if we'd be willing to split the cost. We will have the nice side of the fence (do not want). I'm willing to pay the $500 for someone to take care of at least this much, since you can see we have LOTS of fence to replace.
Rob is the one who owns the cats that visit N from time to time. (We think.)
Anyway, the last neighbor we actually haven't met. I doubt our experience is unqiue, but when we moved in our neighbors were SO quick on tattling on each other for being cheap sakes about replacing fence. Tony and Shanna's other neighbor (Pam) came to tell us not to accept a check from Tony or Shanna (their checks bounce), Tony and Shanna then complained about Pam to us and practically called her a old, dumb hag, and as mentioned previously, Gail seems to want us to reimburse her for something that occurred when McVicker owned the property. But everyone - Pam, Rob, Tony and Shanna, say that these unknown neighbors, who have a pool, are the worst. Rob says that when we went to show them the quote for a section of the fence between the two properties the pool-neighbors said, "It's your fence. You replace it." I'm not sure the HOA would agree, but no one wants to fight. Everyone prefers backstabbing and snide comments instead.
So that's what we're up against.
In terms of the fence we own, the right hand side has the gate, but the gate is pretty much broken and the fence looks the worse for Ike.
The left hand side of fence facing the street was almost entirely demolished in the storm. We used to have a tree right outside the fence, but it got cracked and fell on top of the fence. We're almost glad that there's no fence for the time being, since it makes it easier to move around the house while I'm removing the bricks from the front bed. However, it has led to people wandering onto our property, because apparently people forget private property rules when fences are missing. A few months ago there were many maintenance crews visiting the street to mark for electrical lines, sewage pipe routes, etc. They would knock on people doors to see if they were home to give notice that they needed access to their backyards. If no one answered, they just went around anyway. But when they got to our house, no one knocked, and I heard them wandering in the backyard. I confronted one group to ask what they were doing -- and they behaved as if I was crazy and rude for asking them a question. We've had trouble with others (see: Tony and Shana's dogs; Tony and Shana; people evading police questioning). We need fence!
When we do eventually get to replacing this fence, we intend to bring the whole thing forward about 10 feet so that the AC unit will be enclosed in the backyard and not publicly available as it is now.
The section with Rob will be fixed professionally later this month (February 21-ish), we might end up teaming up with Team Tony and Shana to fix the shared fence, and N and I plan to do the sections of the fence on the front of the house ourselves, as soon as the weather is warmer. The fence "shared" with selfish-pool-neighbor we'll wait on: if he doesn't want to contribute, we figure we can do it ourselves in our own sweet time. But aren't people with pools supposed to have fences for insurance purposes?
Looking over this again, it's amazing how much nicer the new fencing looks. It really looks good and seems like a quality install too.
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