Hello.
We moved into a terraced house in October. It needs a fair bit of work because the previous owner left it in a bit of a state. But before we've even really begun, we're finding the neighbours on one side intrusive and a bit intimidating.
First it was about our new fence. This fence adjoins both properties, but legally is our problem and since it was broken we replaced it. We kept lines of communication open and went round to explain what we were doing.
Our fence builder says that three times a day for every day he was there, the neighbour next door would be out telling him he didn't like what he was doing, that he was a wanker, that he was a cowboy, he shouldn't be in the country etc. Horrid. He also advised that the neighbours had taken about 15cm of our boundary line, giving them a marginally larger garden (which is nkthing but concrete). We didn't have a problem with this. Choose your battles, right? The fencer did however, need to drill into about 2cm of their concrete to fix a post. They came round and gave us hell over this. My DH was very reasonable and said yes it's unfortunate that you've lost 2 cm square of concrete but does it really matter? We managed to placate him for that evening.
Anyway, it went on. The most ridiculous version of events was when the neighbour told us his cat was getting very scared because the cat isn't used to looking out of the window and seeing another house.
Now that the fence is fully up, the neighbour has played hell with my DH again saying he doesn't like the design. Tough! It's a contemporary slatted style, and the neighbour's complaining that there is no privacy and that he can see into my kitchen (not true).
Then there was the time that I was suffering a panic attack after getting out of the car. We parked up the road but the neighbour was at his doorstep staring at us. At one point he started to come over to ask what was going on. My DH explained that I was not well, but I would be fine. Since then, when I am leaving for work he sometimes comes to the door and stares at me when I'm crossing the street.
Where does it end? My husband is having to go over every week and talk him down at the moment. The neighbour's told us he could hear us arguing, he can hear us having sex, and he can hear our TV (likewise). 😞😢 Creeping me out.
We have to have some steel put up in our living room to support our ceiling, and this necessitates a party wall agreement. We are not doing anything big like an extension, but want to do everything above board. I'm scared that they will reject the party wall agreement and we will not be able to do any works in future, because they going to make life really difficult.
We have tried Christmas cards, a bottle of wine, apologies, fairness, calm and reasonable chat, we have tried speaking to his husband who is quite a different character. But I'm really worried that we're going to have 10 years of wars with an angry and irrational man who is a major curtain twitcher.
Any advice?