First time poster, long time lurker. Hoping the lovely mumsnetters can give me some sensible advice. Bear with me its a bit long and rambly (in the interests of not drip feeding). Also - diagram!
Our outwardly seeming mid 60s middle class respectable neighbour has a long history of being batshit crazy and has fallen out with everyone around her and all of her neighbours (including previous owners of this house).
We fell out 8/9 years ago about a 30 year old fence between the gardens (amongst other things) I painted my side of it green thinking it was our fence as per the deeds. She kicked off saying it was her fence and we were to remove the green paint and restore it to its original colour. Apologised etc, explained we didnt know, its difficult to remove paint, offering to paint over it etc. None of this was good enough for her and it got to solicitors letters and surveyors stage. (At one point I was gaffer taping up my letter box as every time I went out I came home to a nasty letter) Eventually the solicitors must have persuaded her to drop it and it all fizzled out, though she continues with low level annoyance - clanging gates in the middle of the night to wake us up, mowing, strimming or sanding when we have people in the garden etc. Eventually we put up our own fence inside our boundary that was 2m high.
Last year she had her old fence removed and replaced by another fence, higher than ours, which I argued with the installers was over the legal height and should have planning permission. It looked a mess as it was poking up above ours and screamed neighbour dispute (we want to sell our house soon so trying to avoid having to declare anything) In the end I didn't pursue it as we needed access to her side for some work we were having done so decided to leave in the interests of good will.
This summer we have had a new fence at the back and decided to take out the fence we had erected inside our boundary to make it all match up and look nice, (plus gain back the foot or so of land lost from moving our fence inwards.)
On seeing we had done this, she has waited until I have gone out then, leaned right over her fence into our garden to messily paint the top third of her fence on our side, letting it drip/splodge down and ensuring it looks a mess, just out of sheer spitefulness.
Obviously its her fence, legally I can't touch it or change it and she is entitled to make it look awful on our side if she wants to.
WWYD?
I could paint the rest of it the same colour but it will start all the nasty letters up again.(She leans over and checks it to make sure I havent done anything about it, I have video evidence of her doing this)
If I leave it it looks awful though will probably fade over a few years but we want to move sooner than that.
I could put our old fence back up but you would still see her fence above it and it would still look suspect to potential buyers with it being a double fence.
I could try and jet wash it off but she would probably just re paint?
I could string razor wire across to prevent her leaning over? (I have kids but it would be high up)
I could grow bamboo or similar to hide it but then thats expensive.
Any suggestions on what to do?