I’ve lived in my house for about 4-5years. My garden backs onto the garden of another house, which is on the next street. On plans, this fence, along the ‘back’ of my garden is the neighbour. It continues along to form the back of another neighbours garden as well, so is quite a long fence for this house to maintain, 6 panels in my garden and about 4/5 in the next garden.
Its never been in great condition, bit of a mismatch of flimsy panels and wooden posts. An elderly couple live/d there, didn’t ever see much of them, I know the husband died a couple of years ago though. The lady has carers come in, but does come to the door to see them off etc, so isn’t bed bound. Their adult son comes round periodically, but has some sort of additional needs I think.
The old man used to ‘bodge’ things and would periodically whack a couple of nails in to try and hold the fence up for another year. Now it is buggered though! Some slats have fallen off, a heavy creeping plant is growing up it on their side and pushing it over, and now it’s leaving on my shed roof and bowing that.
What do I do? Im not happy with it damaging my shed and if it loses any more slats my dog will be able to wander through to onto their drive way/straight onto the road. Do I go round and speak to the old lady? She will probably be able to come to the door, but not sure how much she’ll be able to arrange? Speak to the son? The odd bit I’ve seen off him, I think I’m unlikely to get far with that conversation? Offer to arrange for a quote for the work for her to pay for it? I’ve considered contributing to a new fence myself, but don’t really have the spare money for it at the moment, and it’s frustrating that it’s clearly never been properly sorted, just bits of random wood patched onto the panels over the years which is why it’s in the state it is now. Neither though do I want to upset or stress the old lady about needing to get it sorted…but it really does!