We bought our house in 1999 and have put a lot of time and energy into creating a yard to enjoy. The one thing we've never been able to remedy, however, is the fence bordering our next-door neighbor's property. If it was our fence, it would have been down within a month of our closing on the house, but it wasn't ours to dispose of. Each subsequent winter, each windy thunderstorm, knocked more of the rotten planks out of that fence. We came to call it the Gap-Toothed Old Woman.
We've tried for years to get them to at least repair it. One summer, they had their yard guy replace some broken planks and paint it. Unfortunately, he didn't finish the job -- he painted their side of it, but when it came to our side, he only painted the portion visible from the street. The rest he left undone. Each year, we've nicely asked if the fence could come down (even offering to remove it ourselves) or if we could split the cost of a new fence. They always declined. The fence is just....There.
Here's what we've looked at the last nearly seven years. This is what we've seen from the patio, just 10 feet away.
