~The Bayleaves~: The FENCE: A Series of Unfortunate Events

You may or may not remember that I posted THIS picture back in May, and mentioned that we were putting in a new six foot vinyl fence.

Yeah. That was back in May. It's taken me this long to scrape up the desire to post about our fence debacle. Allow me to preface it by saying that our fence was finally installed in OCTOBER. Something that should have taken a few weeks stretched over the course of our entire summer, and became a constant source of frustration, anger, and sometimes bitterness. I debated about posting anything, because I wasn't sure it was something we really needed to look back on and remember. In the end, I decided that it was a part of our lives, and it's good for our kids to see us deal with adversity.

It all started with an innocent conversation with our neighbor; me simply mentioning our intention to put up a fence around our side-yard to give our kids a safer place to play, and us a little more privacy. A very short time later, we receive a note from the city informing us that they'd received an "anonymous" tip we were building a fence, and that we need to pull permits. Our contractor had told us we didn't need to as we were just replacing an existing fence, but we figured it was better to cover ourselves, and Teag went downtown to collect the necessary paperwork. I can still remember the phone call I got from him. I was on a fieldtrip with Maisie's class, and Teag was very upset; understandably so. Rather than granting us a permit for what is a very straightforward request, the city told us we were SOL, as our house faced the wrong street. Say what now? Yeah, evidently 60+ years ago, the contractor built our house facing the wrong way. Our fault? Apparently! This meant that our front yard was really our side yard, our side yard was really our front yard, etc. And you can't have a six foot fence in your "front" yard. We could either let it go and not get a fence, or pay $220 to the city for a variance. We chose the latter.

The variance should have been a simple if obnoxious affair, and the city employee we were working with said it was pretty obvious it was coded wrong, and he may even be able to do an administrative approval. That is until our neighbor decided to contest it. Here's the thing: our proposed fence affected her not at all. It didn't even touch her property. We couldn't understand why she had such a problem with it, or why she was actively trying to thwart it. Needless to say, it caused a fair bit of tension. The sad part is, our kids loved talking to this neighbor. We've been very friendly with her, increasingly so over the past decade, and all the sudden they couldn't really go talk to her anymore. We didn't talk badly about her in front of our kids, but given her levels of deceit and antagonism, of which I prefer not to go into detail here, we felt it best that our kids avoid any interaction with her from that point on. Frankly, we just don't trust her anymore, which makes me sad.

So on July 10th, we went to the planning commission, where Teag gave a very well-thought-out power point presentation. We'd recruited friends, family and neighbors to speak to the commission on our behalf. I honestly think the commission was rather shocked at just how many people were there to speak for us. Our neighbor also got a few minutes to say why she thought the fence was a bad idea. We were fairly disappointed to see that she had also recruited the elderly neighbor across the street; another lady we've been nothing but good to. There were a few tense moments while the commission debated, and it looked like it could swing either way. In the end, they ruled in our favor: with a stipulation. Our back gate presented a possible threat to pedestrian safety, so we had to make a sort of trapezoidal cutout to allow for sight triangles. Teag wasn't terribly pleased with this verdict, but I felt like it was a victory. I was ready to be done with the fence.

We had to wait ten days until the appeal period had passed before we could proceed, and on the tenth day, we found out from the city employee that our neighbor had in fact, appealed the decision. This really threw me for a loop. Teag had been expecting it, but I honestly couldn't believe she'd go to such lengths. Her issues stem from the concern that even though our proposed fence doesn't affect her, theoretically someone in the future could build a six foot fence between our houses, blocking her view of the snow-capped mountains she could sometimes see out her side window in the winter. You think I'm kidding, or exaggerating? I'm not. Those are her words. I honestly can't believe she chose to sever a good friendship over a partial, hidden-for-half-the-year view out a side window. That, and apparently she thinks vinyl is an eyesore?

The appeal process is meant only for really serious stuff, people use it for things like land disputes, not fences. And she actually had to pay over $300 to do it. Appeals are almost never granted, as the only thing the hearing officer can do is overturn the decision if some sort of law was broken by the planning commission. All this worked in our favor. Sadly, listening to her argue her side with the appeals officer, she sounded ignorant, and incredibly selfish. Here we're talking about our kids safety, and some privacy for our home, and she's talking about a view.

The officer ruled to uphold the commission's decision. Finally, finally we had permission to get our fence. There is always the chance that our neighbor could sue us, or sue the city, but as it's November now, and the fence has been up for over a month, I'm praying that won't happen. The one incredibly frustrating thing we learned from the appeal: the city employees had misunderstood the code, and no one could have ever legally built a six foot fence between us and our neighbor. Perhaps if they'd gotten that right to begin with, she wouldn't have trampled over our friendship to preserve her so-called view. As it is, we decided to put in a four foot fence between us, not out of bitterness or anger, but simply because we needed the separation. I choose not to associate with someone who brings that kind of poison and contention into mine and my kids lives.

So without further ado, here is our new fence.

Four foot fence (the slats are for pedestrian safety).

New gate between house and garage

Front yard

Side yard: Notice the cutout for pedestrian safety

Here are some views from inside the fence. Strangely enough, I feel like things feel larger inside it, though I do wish we had the 100+ square feet we lost from the cut out.

Along the back of the house

Back gate

Side yard

We plan to relocate our garden from where it used to be, and move the playground over so it's next to the fence, thus widening the open area instead of dividing it. I might actually buy some patio furniture now that we can eat outside without the entire neighborhood watching. We haven't spent a great deal of time landscaping it, as it was always a bit of an eyesore, but now I have a lot of ideas on improvements to make back there, a way to turn it into a bit of a haven.

I know this post is already crazy long, but I thought I'd also add this one last thing. Earlier in the summer, Teag installed some black shutters on our exterior windows at my request.