Hello, we have a potentially tricky conversation to have with next door and I’d love some mn ideas on how to broach the subject!
We’ve lived in our terraced house for two years and the fence between us and NDN on one side wasn’t in great shape when we moved in. NDN has lived there forever. She’s fit, healthy and about 70, so whilst older than us, definitely not elderly. We have never seen much of her, but always a friendly ‘hello and how are you’ between us when we do. She has once said something about the fence, in a nice way ‘it’s quite wobbly and you’ll need to do something about it’.
Said fence took a battering in some winds last winter so DH and I have supported it as best we can from our side with some planks which look like ugly buttresses in our garden.
We’ve finally had the fence looked at it as we want to get some work done on our garden and it can’t be saved. It needs to be completely replaced. The biggest problem is that she has some raised beds on her side which just have soil piled up against the wood without a waterproofing and the bottom 50cm is rotten all along.
Despite the fact the ‘back’ of the fence faces us, I’ve rechecked the land registry plans and it turns out it is her fence! Absolutely no doubt about it. Given she’s lived there forever, I suspect she assumes it’s ours because she has the ‘front’ of the fence rather than that she’s trying to be a CF.
DH and I want to remove the temporary buttressing from our garden so we can actually use it, but when we do, the fence will fall down so we need to talk to NDN. I can be a bit forthright so please can you help me with how you’d approach this? Don’t want it to seem like a blame game or holding her to ransom over the fence falling down but ultimately something needs to be done.
(And I don’t know if it helps, but the person we had look at it would do the work so we can offer them as a suggestion but don’t want to seem too pushy).
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AIBU?
Help me not be an AIBU neighbour!
64 replies
HJ40 · 10/12/2018 08:31
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