Erf. Yawn. Erf.
Wake up, sleepy head and slackers!
Awwwwww Mom, I don't
wanna get up. Wah wah wah...
Thanks for the coffee, Mark.
It's a cloudy 47°F in Rockville with chances of rain for a couple hours either side of noon, and a high around 65. I'll spare you roughly 3,000 words of descriptive prose:
After a year and a half, perhaps as much as 21 months, of procrastination on my part I finally managed to connect with our back-fence neighbor yesterday for a conversation about the need to replace a part of said fence. It's our fence and our responsibility but it's quite close to the property line in some places. We've been advised that a retaining wall is needed, or we'll continually face erosion problems and constantly-shifting / leaning fence posts.
It's possible that at one end the wall may encroach on the neighbor's yard and we wanted to be sure that he didn't have a problem with that, and also to get his agreement on where we believe the property line is located. It's shown on the City and County websites as a straight line; the existing fence line is a very shallow asymmetrical "V" with the point facing our house and the tips of the arms lying on or very close to the line. Another neighbor had a survey done 15 or 16 years ago, so we have a reliable marker at that end. On the opposite end, where the new section of fence will go, we're
assuming that another fence post is a reasonable indicator
We also wanted his permission to allow the work crews to access the site through his yard, as there's no easy way to get to it from our side. As an incentive to get his okay for all of that, we've told him that the "good" side of the fence will face him (it'll be a wood fence similar to this style:
His side will have the posts concealed by the fence boards. We did the same thing a few years ago when we replaced a split-rail fence with this same style, along about 2/3 of the same property line. We also let him know that the retaining wall (varying height due to terrain slope, but probably 3 to 4 feet) will most likely be timber rather than masonry, although that decision will only be finalized once we've talked to the contractors who will actually do the work.
No matter the material, at least one tree will have to come out; it's a tree without particular woodland beauty although it does provide lovely shade on our hardscaped area so that'll be a bit of a loss but it's clearly on our side of the presumed line so it's ours to deal with.
That's probably a lot more detail than you needed but that's the way I roll...
Stay safe and well everyone and tell your dear ones you love them. Do it NOW, today, because tomorrow may be too late.
)"
