I like our neighbourhood, I really do. There’s lots of great families here and we’ve made some good friends, as have our children. It’s a friendly community where people wave hello to you as they pass you in their cars or stop to say hi and chat about the weather if you meet them while out walking — even if you’ve never actually met them before. People bring baked goods to new neighbours and get together for street parties and all that sort of thing.
So it’s totally incongruous, I think, that no one around here seems to engage in that age-old tradition of getting a fence in co-operation with your neighbours. Am I crazy, or did it used to be commonplace for people who got fences to chat about it with their neighbour first? Maybe decide on a style together, then split the cost? Invite some input, get together as a group of five or six houses to save money? Or at least give out a heads-up?
It seems that the thing to do, around here at least, is to just pick out a fence, then put it up all around your property, without asking first. To avoid having to ask, you can put it about three or four inches in from the property line. Then, it’s all on your property, and you’re paying for the whole thing, so your neighbours can just suck it, I guess.
This “three inches in” thing is so common that many properties have a six-inch dead zone between them, a narrow band between two completely different fences, where weeds grow and garbage collects. It’s ugly and a hotbed for allergy-causing plants. I really, really dislike the dead zones. It’s insane how many of them there are, too.
We have fencing on two sides of our backyard right now. Across the back we have a glaring white fence which we do not like and did not want. The guy who lived there two years ago — before the Princess Charming family moved in last summer — chose the fence and ordered the fence and made all the arrangements. Then he came by to “talk to us” one week before the fence went in, to ask us to pay for half of the back strip. We told him we wanted some input on what the fence was going to look like. He responded by — naturally — putting the fence three inches in from the property line, and putting up the fence he wanted anyway.
The good news is that after twenty years, we can claim that three inches as ours, because we’ve been the ones maintaining the grass on that side. So I guess, if he hadn’t have moved out of the country, I could go over there and tell him to suck that.
On the one side of the backyard we have a lovely beige fence that we picked out with the neighbours on that side, because we love them and they are reasonable and we both wanted each other to be happy, so we were easily able to find something we both liked.
Now we still have about 10 feet across the back to complete with a different backing neighbour, and then we have to put another strip of fence on the other side. We’ve been wanting to finish the fence for a while now, but the side neighbours just moved in six months ago, and we didn’t want to attack them with fence discussions. Like, “Hi! So nice to meet you! Here are some muffins, and hey, want to put up a fence so we never have to see you again?” That sort of thing seems unfriendly somehow.
But on the weekend, we came home from doing some shopping and hey, there are stakes on the side neighbour side! Outlining a fence! We like those people! We talk to those people! Were they ever going to mention this?
So goes over to ask them what’s up, and they said they’ve entertained a couple of quotes but still aren’t sure what they want. They’ll get back to us when they do know what they want.
Isn’t that a little late to be bringing us into their process? Is this going to be another, “We’ve picked out this, you can pay for half or else?” situation?
And just now, I was sitting with the kids having a snack when I glance out at the backyard and I see…our 10-foot back neighbours STAKING OUT A FENCE.
I’m sitting right here, people! I can see you! Are you going to tell us what the hell is going on? Anytime soon?
I fear that we are going to end up with four different kinds of fence all around our backyard. Which SO sucks, it will be SO ugly.
But I really, really don’t want to go out and get our own fence and then line the existing fence with our own PISS OFF WE DON’T WANT YOUR OPINION style of fencing, complete with dead zone all around.
BLURG!
We have good neighbours, we really do. So why can’t we make good fences?
TurtleHead 
You should form some sort of neighbourhood fence committee. Bring people to the table.
I agree — that is a really crappy, un-neighborly thing to do.
It feels to me like suburbs maintain a facade of neighborliness but are really fairly insulated — more than what I remember as a kid growing up (although we didn’t really live in the suburbs). Sure, everyone waves or chit-chats, but that’s easy, and it’s not the same thing as having a relationship with your neighbor. That takes time, I guess, but negotiating a fence is also a mechanism for advancing your relationship with your neighbor, and I suspect many people just find it easier not to take that step if there’s a way around it.
Last year some time we were putting together a family trust and at some point we needed real witnesses when we signed some of the paperwork. We got two neighbors to do the witnessing for us, but even though we wave and chat with those people all the time, the awkwardness of simply inviting those people into our kitchen for 10 minutes to witness a few signatures was sort of palpable. And I’m not saying we were comfortable and they were awkward — I think everyone felt that way. That was just a little outside the comfort zone of the relationships we had with those people — which is sad.