Thank you to all of you who took the time to comment this weekend. It really was fun getting to hear from the “silent majority”. It felt like a bit of a love-fest and I’m really hoping that you will free more confidence to comment again. You did so well!
(This is me resorting to flattery to see if you will comment again.) Now I’m gonna throw a question at you that would be blatant comment-seeking if it wasn’t something that I actually need help with. I’m really looking for feedback with our next-door neighbors. It happened just today, and I’m not sure what to do. Mark determined it was time to “ask on the blog”. Okay, here’s the situation . . . (not involving my parents going away on a week’s vacation) Okay, our next-door neighbors came by today. (Reeeeallly hoping they don’t read my blog.) Anyways, they let us know that they got an estimate to replace the fence between our houses, and wanted to know if we would pay for half of it. Some details on this fence: It’s old. It’s looking rough and chipped and leaning in spots. However, the fence is on the side of our house that lines our garage. It offers no function for us, we never, ever see it, and we don’t really care how it looks as long as it’s standing. Actually, I don’t even really care if it’s standing, but I can see why they would want it to hold up. Our neighbors want to replace the fence with a brick wall. They got an estimate today – $3500. Mark thinks that we are obligated to pay for half of it. I think we aren’t – especially since we still have outstanding repairs we can’t even pay for inside our home, that we have to look at every day. I also think it is a lot of money to assume that someone can just drop on a fence repair. Anyways, what do you guys think? Are we really bad neighbors if we say no? Obviously we have no legal obligation but does this fall under the “neighborly code”? What would you do?