Have we been unreasonable?

[cheeseandcrackers77]

Moved to a new house last winter. House hasn't been upgraded in over 30 years including the garden. Explained to next door when we first met that we would be fencing in the garden for kids and animal safety and neighbour was happy with this (currently no fence between).
Now with the better weather we are doing the work. Neighbour knew what we were planning but obviously had a think about it and is now not happy. We explained it was all on our side and wouldn't disturbed her. She agreed she didn't like change and just wanted to know more which we understood.
On the other side the house is empty has been for years, owner lives abroad and hasn't been home for a number of years. There is a neighbour who does keep an eye on the house but I'm not sure where he actually lives on our street (fairly big street). Our neighbour who was concerned said she hoped we would be in contact with the other side before doing any work. We pointed out that when we moved in the fence between us and absent neighbour was in a bad state and had actually fallen down into our garden so nobody was actually maintain the garden/fence. We temporarily fixed it without giving it a 2nd thought.
DH has today just gone out and started work on the new fence saying we can't put off doing the work while we try and get hold of an absent neighbour. So are we bu to just go ahead. Any mess made will be rectified and the end result will be a safer and better looking fence.

Surely as long as you only put fences along the boundary line ie not across anyone else's property then it's fine?
I'm no expert though.

No, yanbu to get on with it without informing absent neighbour if you have no way of getting hold of him. You could pop a note through the door explaining the work you are doing so that if whoever is looking after the house is worried, they know they can discuss it with you.

We recently paid lots of money to have new fencing as ours was blown over or barely upright. We told our neighbour that we would replace it with a good quality fencing and would pay for it all ourselves.

Was she happy? No. We had to work very hard to get consent despite the fact that the panels were mostly lying in her garden.

I thought she'd be over the bloody moon to find out she'd get new fencing and not have to pay a penny. I know I would be!

But upshot is, we still get on well as neighbours and everyone was happy in the end.

Yes definitely on our side of the boundary. I didn't think anyone would mind. Every house around us has fences up in fact neighbour actually has 2 fences up between her other neighbour and the house behind her so we are about confused why she is upset at us putting one up.

Mrsbobdylan what a nightmare for you but glad to hear everyone is still neighbourly.
We really are nice people and do consider our neighbours but I really didn't think anyone would be annoyed. DH said she should think herself lucky we didn't giver her a bill for half the costs (like a neighbour did to us in a previous house but that's another story).

As long as it's on your property and you leave any fencing that belongs to neighbours alone then crack on.

DH just said the lady who looks after next door happened to pop by so he spoke to her. She said to go ahead and do what needed to be done, said the current fence was needing replaced anyway.
We think next door neighbour has been used to having the run of our garden as well as hers due to our house being empty for sometime.

We think next door neighbour has been used to having the run of our garden as well as hers due to our house being empty for sometime

I'm thinking along the same lines.

Let her twist she'll get over herself.