Do you have a testy neighbor story to share ( Updated latest action)

Rob Keeble

Member
Messages
12,633
Location
GTA Ontario Canada
Hi All

I have just spent and exciting time reading Stu from Japans long rennovation thread. Now I am up to date I plan to follow it with great interest.

It dawned on me that I derieved a great deal of "comfort" from the knowledge that I was not the only one to have neighbor difficulties.

Given I feel quiet agreeved about the whole neighbor thing i have had with my shop I thought it would do me some good to put my case out here and rant. No I am not seeing a shrink :rofl:

Well here goes......

When I first moved into this house from South Africa, I promised myself that I was going to do everything in my power to have the most cordial relationship possible with my neighbors. I wanted to leave the past of South Africa and its social issues behind and start afresh. I also had a father who never got on with the neighbors only as a result of how they introduced themselves. He was old school very old school and boy that is another story.

So with a new house and no fences (in South Africa it is not uncommon to have the highest fence possible and then add barbed wire to the top ala staglag hoven 5) it some getting used to living on top of each other. My Northern Neighbor as Stu refers to them, came to Canada 20 years ago from Vitenam. I thought this was really cool and an opportunity to get to know another people from a different part of the planet. Try as I did to get them to mix in at the street functions and social gatherings but nothing doing. The best he would offer was a comment on the weather either good bad or a shrug. Their daughter went to the same Catholic school as out older son so when Xmas time came we took them a few gifts and they reciprocated. All was bliss. We cut the lawn between us and he even played with my younger son when flying kites in the backyard.

Then they approached me about building a fence between us. I said fine I would go along with them but just wanted them to know that the fence had to be done properly and by properly I wanted to see posts go down below the frost line. This is after all Canada and I had seen a number of fences the were heaving as a result of poor building.

Against my own desires I decided in the interests of peace I would allow them to choose the contractor and would go along with paying half of whatever the quote came to if it was half reasonable.

All was fine and we agreed on a guy to build the fence.

The big day came when the fence had to be marked out and boy did they change. They then discovered much to their disappointment exactly where the property line was. I had no hand in this I just left it to the fence guy to be the conveyor of bad news. We had both been given the same survey plans to the property by the builders. The pegs were still in the ground and unfortunately the line was a a lot closer to their home than i think they had thought.

Now to top it all they had ended up planting conifers all along the front border with out property but these were now way over in our property. They had not consulted us as to whether we wanted a hedge of conifers but when my wife realized they were about a foot over in our property she said to the neighbor they would have to move them over since they now have an idea of where the property line was. Bomb no 1.

Then the guy starts to put the post holes in the ground with a tractor and a auger. Out comes all the garbage that the builders use to fill a lot before they skim over with top soil to hide it. Boy did we have building rubble come out of every hole.

Well the evening after this little lot I get home and the neighbor approaches me and says " Rob we dont need the skid anymore, we can save $90 dollars each." I said we need to have the skid to take away the garbage. No he says we just throw it over the fence. Now for those of you that have not seen my shop picture posting, I live on a ravine. Whats more it has been declared a nature conservation area and is part of the famous Oak Ridges Moraine in Ontario Canada. Well I could not control myself and I saw red.:huh: Trying to keep cool I told the neighbor (who has been living here 20 years longer than me) the law did not permit this and I would not permit this just to save $90. Yeh...lets all dump our garbage where ever we like and end up living in an even more polluted world.

Well I think Bomb No.2 was me not going along on this and boy you think I was forcing him into bankruptcy.

Then I decided to go ahead with my shop http://familywoodworking.org/forums/showthread.php?t=10987

and the second Vietnam War errupted along with Hanoi Hanna for those who know who she was.

I have had the town building inspectors come down and read me the riot act over starting an industrial area after they approved my plans, I have had the Electrical Safety Authority inspector come out (nice guy I get on well with him) after I put conduits in between the house and the shop to run the electrical cable. I have had the by laws officer come out and check on me (more than once, each time I take something out to the shop) and I have been photographed and had abuse shouted at me when I have visitors sitting on my deck. (deck is at the rear of the house in front of the shop. They have written letters to all my neighbors (which the neighbors gladly called me and gave me) doing a real character assasination.

In the end they have dulled what was a very exciting project and a dream workshop. Now I find myself feeling like a criminal when I go out into my backyard and enter my shop. I get watched as if I was a spy on the North Korean border. :(

As we understood from them before the drama started they were going to sell up and move to Toronto as soon as the daughter finishes high school. As my calculations go that is by June 09. I hope those plans are still on.

Yes my shop is large but the town approved the plans and I am well within the lot coverage and have all the neccessary setbacks etc.

As far as view is concerned at the back of us there are large numbers of confiers that were replanted after all the moraine was regraded at the end of building. There is a stream in the middle and the conifers have already grown to the point where they are blocking the view. So neither of us has a view that we can complain is being obstructed by my shed.

I am open to any suggestions from all the good folks out there as to how to fix this relationship as it really bugs me.

Thanks for listening ( oops) reading my rant. Go ahead and post yours here or ideas you may have on fixing my problem. I will review all.
 
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Boy Rob!!!!!!

i could start my novel here as well been there and am still doing that you wont win in my book. i havnt and i have fought this family since 74.. it gooes away for awhile then it comes back to bite me... the last session put a house right on the lot restrictions from my liner i had tried to buy the property prior to this happening several times and the darn witch wouldnt sell.. but she thought she owned more than she does walked out on to me to look at where she wanted this house and asked her what she was up to and she lied to me and said she was just looking fo rthe lot tlines and that she was on her property.. well i had the concrete orderd for the wknd and the stakes and escavation happened the day before...i darn near stopped it and sold out.. i was very pived andnow we get to listen to here and athe rst and start at ahouse in my back yard so i feel for you rob now enter in ti dont do the city life at all and to have neight i dislike very much move right in well nuff said..
 
Ah, neigbors... Unfortunately situations like yours is exactly what happens when neighbor #1 has values, priorities, wants & desires that differ from neighbor #2.

These situations often degrade to the point that one party (or both), start calling various authorities who they expect to take their side and declare the other side "wrong" so they can validate their opinion.

As the guy that gets called to "fix the problem", I can assure you there is no easy solution. The bottom line is your trying to change someone's value system to meet yours, that's not going to happen very often if ever. Don't take this wrong Rob, but I can assure you your neighbor feels exactly like you do, except the problem is you, not him. Try extending an olive branch, I don't think you'll ever be best friends, but maybe a reasonable truce can be agreed on.

Mike
 
Ah, neigbors... Unfortunately situations like yours is exactly what happens when neighbor #1 has values, priorities, wants & desires that differ from neighbor #2.

These situations often degrade to the point that one party (or both), start calling various authorities who they expect to take their side and declare the other side "wrong" so they can validate their opinion.

As the guy that gets called to "fix the problem", I can assure you there is no easy solution. The bottom line is your trying to change someone's value system to meet yours, that's not going to happen very often if ever. Don't take this wrong Rob, but I can assure you your neighbor feels exactly like you do, except the problem is you, not him. Try extending an olive branch, I don't think you'll ever be best friends, but maybe a reasonable truce can be agreed on.

Mike

hey mike, i tried that and un beknowns to me till afterwards, she had her guys cut down 2 small trees and then they dumped some of there brush and roots from making the yard purty on me!!!!! some day that dove that sat on the branch is gonna relieve himself:D
 
I live on a cul-de-sac, and am very fortunate that none of the neighbors have a problem with me running a compressor, dust collector, and pneumatic sander at 3:00 AM. (I do close the garage door after about 9:30 PM, though, and once you get about 100' from the garage, the noise is not much louder than the typical hum of a city.) I have specifically told the nearby neighbors to let me know if the noise is ever a problem, and each time I bring it up, they insist that they can't hear me when they are inside their houses.

Our neighbor to the south has dogs that like to bark right outside our bedroom window, though. We've had to go over there a number of times to ask them to stifle their dogs. When they're not home, the garden hose sprayed over the fence seems to do the trick. :rolleyes: Nowadays, the dogs just need to hear me getting the hose ready, and they usually shut up. ;)
 
Well, my neighbors look like saints in comparrison!

Gee, Rennie, I thought you said you had the "Addams" family next door...

And thankfully I've never had any issue with my neighbours anything like this.
Of course, my shop is in the basement, so I doubt any of them hear anything. I used to run my planer in the driveway some years ago, but that was usually mid afternoon on a Saturday, and no noisier than their lawnmowers.
 
I have a very odd situation. I only have full time neighbors on one side of me. To my south is a Church and they are rarely ever rowdy. ;) They do have a couple of outdoor events and bring in a big PA system. No way am I going to complain.

There are farms surrounding the North and West sides. Matter of fact the neighbor behind me keeps his horses on my pasture at times. Even repairs my fences so how can I complain???

Here is a plat of my neighborhood.

plat.jpg

Now across the street is very densely populated.They are just side by side but amazingly they are quietest neighbors you could ask for. Except for a few late night visitors we never hear a peep out of them.

neighbors.jpg
 
Wow, I live in the middle of my 40 acres. Had a kid down the road around the corner try to drive his 4 wheeler on the hay ground, my visit to dad seemed to take care of that. Now that we dug a pond and I kept a good sandhill to shoot into, funny no one comes around!!!! :rolleyes: That is except Larry!!! (maybe he didn't know??):eek: :rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:
 
Rob, I feel your pain, but like Mike said, there really is nothing you can do to change the way your neighbour feels about this stuff.

Next to our building that our business is in, the liquor shop, the neighbour there is really a piece of work. The trouble between him and my wife's family goes back years and years. He owns a building as well, an even larger one than our building, but it is really poorly constructed, cheaply constructed. The list of stuff goes onto volumes, trust me.

Some un-neighbourly stuff he has done, things that you just got to shake your head at; I had to remove the tap handle on our garden hose behind the shop, the guy would go behind our shop, and fill his bucket for mopping the floor, or to fill his kettle to make tea, yep, stealing our water :doh:

He would unplug, and NOT replug our Coke vending machine to vacuum his van out. Anything that is not nailed down, with our name on it, he will steal. He uses the the bin beside our vending machines, that we have to have for empty cans etc, to dump his garbage (as a business you have to pay about $2.50 per bag of garbage to dump it) and he puts the empty cans and such from HIS vending machine into our bin. He also takes his bin into his shop at night, so people have to put their empty cans and such into our bin.

It is all really petty, minor stuff, but it adds up to the point where myself or my wife will basically not acknowledge his presence. I find that the easiest way to deal with him, just ignore him.

Maybe you can do the same thing, or can you put up a privacy shade or something so he cannot eyeball you all the time?

As a last resort, you could talk to a lawyer about getting a restraining order or file a harassment suit, heck, if you had the "letters" he wrote to one of your neighbours, that may be grounds for "Slander" or at least the threat of a "Slander" charge might change his behavior?

I would try just ignoring him first, or you could make something really nice for him, or better for his wife, and give it to them, a nice cutting board or something like that :dunno:

Tough situation, sometimes I wished I lived on about 100 acres out in the middle of now where....... :rolleyes: :wave:

Chin up, you are doing nothing wrong :thumb:
 
Well this didn't happen to me, but my brother. He married into a ready made family with 2 young boys and by the time they moved into their current house the boys were teenagers. Now their next door neighbor is some Township official 2 townships away, but this busybody feels empowered to dictate her wishes to anybody who will let her. My brother was warned by other new neighbors of some of the junk she's pulled in the past, but for the first few years any disagreements were relatively minor run-of-the-mill stuff. The fun started when my brother put in a retaining wall (all inspected and up to code) so he could widen his driveway up by the garage. She decides that this is causing her basement to leak and starts a campaign of harrassment with my brother (she wants him to pay for her basement problems), his wife, and the township building inspectors who told her that if anything the drainage that my brother put under this retaining wall is drawing runoff away from both houses, that it's to code, and told her to cease calling them over the matter. The following spring by brother decides to put up a 6 ft privacy fence around the yard. It gets installed inside the existing cyclone fence with the good side facing out, and tied to the cyclone fence with some sort of wire ties. Once again, she's on the phone to the TWP inspectors numerous times, who once again tell her that it's to code and cease calling them over the matter. They come home one day to find she had cut the ties on the cyclone fence on her side and the privacy fence now blown over or leaning due to some stiff wind that day. A couple of the posts which were only in the ground maybe 6-8" had snapped at the bottom. The cops (who are fairly aware of her neighborhood shenigans) were called and gave my brother the option of having her cited for property damage which he chose to decline at the time. So for a while she keeps a low profile.
But next, she decides to start calling the cops and telling them that drugs are being sold at my brother's house. This is apparently caused by the normal traffic coming and going of the 2 boys who are now both driving, plus their friends, my brothers friends, and my SIL's friends and family. The cops show up with their normal "her-again" attitude and inform my brother of this latest development at which time he finally had enough. The township police and building inspectors happily provided my brother with logs of every call she'd made to them against him (way more than my brother was even aware of) and he took her to court. Sued for the property damage (the fence) and dont know the exact charge but either harrassment, slander, or something but got a small monetary settlement plus a restraining order against her. Hasn't heard from her in almost 4 years and she apparently has given up pestering other neighbors now too so my brother has a small neighborhood fan club.
 
These are some amazing stories....I thought my neighbor not mowing his lawn regularly and a barking dog was a problem neighbor! :eek:

Man, I've got it good! :)
 
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