Fence

So, after much debate, we decided to get a 6 foot wood fence for our yard. The neighbor kids are still going into our yard. Even after speaking with them about how dangerous it was, and speaking to their parents, they continue to come into our yard to play on MY kid's things. They don't even bother to ask. I was warned by our good neighbors and another neighbor named Liz (she is decent so far). Apparently, the kids wait until my kids have gone outside to play in the snow (leaving their footprints) and then they decide to go into our yard. This is very smart of them, as I didn't think you check footprints.

I have also been finding a lot of dog shit still in my yard. The last time this happened, I picked up a couple of piles and put them on the sidewalk. I took the girls' sidewalk chalk and wrote something to the effect of: "If this is yours, you need to stop letting your dog shit in my yard". This did nothing, obviously. I also called animal control on our bad neighbors because they were leaving their dog outside in a small cage for over 24 hrs in -20 degree weather. Animal control gave them a warning, as I did not want my name on the report at the time. Now, I don't care.

It has been snowing pretty much since the last time I posted until now. This week it is supposed to rain, but we have been gaining major headway on the project.

We have a contractor friend who is in the Army (retired), and will be coming out this weekend. He has offered to help us put up the fence, and we have asked some of my hubby's other Army buddies to help as well. We picked a 6 ft wall (sounds crazy when I say that outloud), made of wood. We will put a two-door gate in the back, just in case we need to bring some type of cars or trucks to work on the backyard. We will also put locked gates on either side of the house.

Eventually, we will put up a metal black fence in the front. We have been having issues with people letting their dogs onto our property and not cleaning up after them. This will no longer be an issue if we just put up a fence out there. This metal fence will also be a way for us to lock the unwanted neighbors out of our front yard. They like to knock on our door now with random complaints.

The barbed wire was removed this past weekend. My husband went out there with wire cutters and destroyed it. He contacted the farmer (there is a cattle path behind our property), whom it belongs to, and told him to pick it up or risk stepping on it. It was on our side of the property. We're not really sure WHY he put it on OUR property and not his - mainly because we were the ONLY property on the cattle path with the barbed wire. We also spoke to the city about it and were given the "okay" to remove it.

We got permits for our fence. Our bad neighbors found out and caused a stink over it. Since they couldn't stop the work on our fence, they decided to weakly threaten us. Did you know that when you put up a fence around your yard, and it's on the border of someone else's - sometimes they will split the bill? I had no idea about that. We DID ask evil neighbors if they wanted to split the bill since the biggest portion of our fence will be on their side. They declined and stated they will be putting up their own vinyl fence (bad idea, the slats will crack easily out here).

Apparently, they have been going around the neighborhood claiming that IF we put up our fence - they will paint it or remove parts of it. I prewarned them that if they did such a thing, it was considered destroying property as it would be on our property. We made sure to get a land surveyor from the city. He came out this past monday and marked everything for us. We are putting the fence about 3-4 inches into our property so that no one can "claim" the fene as their own, and destroy it. We also go a work permit to put the fence up, so even if they complain, there will be zero issues.

You'll all be happy to know that I have met a new neighbor. Her name is Liz, and she is married (2 yrs) with a small child. She was interesting and not very mean at all. They moved in this past month. Apparently, her yard (she bought the house on the other side of the good neighbors) was covered in weeds too, although not near as bad nor is her property even close to the same size of ours. She offered to lend us her saw for our fence project.

I have not done the walkway. We got in contact with a contractor who will completely level our front yard for $50.00. We did NOT put in sod yet, or make way for the sprinkler system. We were informed, during the winter, that the little snots were still going into our yard. So, all of our effort has transformed to this fence project.

I removed all of the bricks and horrible sprinnklers for him to do that in the next month. My good neighbors and Liz have been coming over every day for the past week, taking the plants that we don't want etc. Most of our yard was overgrown and we had some issues with the trees being too close to the house. We have since ordered new bushes and plants for our planting beds.

These are what we picked out:
http://www.michiganbulb.com/product.asp_Q_pn_E_13407_A_Blue+Girl+Hybrid+Tea+Rose_E_
http://michiganbulb.com/product.asp_Q_pn_E_72765_A_Irish+Moss_E_

We decided to do blue roses for the front bushes (we used to have dead ones, so anything is an upgrade at this point), and irish mosh for in between the bushes.

We removed a LOT of the rocks (thanks for asking Newt), and a lot of the gravel. Our good neighbors took some of the bigger ones to their own yard (we had no use for them), and we are now down to only that one big pile in the back. The side of our house still has rocks laid down, so we will be gathering them up as soon as we finish the fence.

The weeds are all gone. It is now safely into spring, and we can say that our attack on them last year has done the trick. However, there are a lot of little twigs that have been needed to be raked up. I have been doing that myself, and filling up our trash can once a week (it's a big green trash can that they pick up every monday). It fills quickly and we cannot afford to go to the dump - nor have a way to transport it. (Dump costs $100.00 per trip)

I'm not going to lie, we did look into hiring professionals for our fence. However, the cost of materials alone is costing us $6,000. After doing research on the fence, we took 14-16 weeks just for them to come out and give an estimate. That was a long time. After we did get the estimate, we found out that it will cost an additional $3,000 for installation at least. This is too costly for us, as we are attempting to do other things with our yard as well. So, we are saving ourselves a lot of time (they estimated about another 12 weeks to come out for installation) and money.

I would also like to update the walkway path for everyone. I DID get all of the materials listed above, and then some. We decided on the right side facing the house, that we would also do an additional brick driveway. It would match the other brick walkway, and it would be less costly then just throwing down a slab of concrete. (This would cost us about $2,000 as opposed to the brick which was about $900)

I also bought solar lights for the pathway, for when it is completed. This is what they look like:

http://www.lightinguniverse.com/pathway-lighting/kichler-lighting-15319pz-mission-path-garden-pathway-light_g20675.html?isku=398977&linkloc=cataLogProductItemsImage

That is the closest picture I could find of it. The only difference is the glass for actual light is brushed glass, clear. It looks cracked from far away, even though it's really not and we DO have the option of hanging it but with the wind here we decided to just put a pole through the bottom and make it stand up.

So, even though it has been a while, most of the outside has not really been touched due to the snow. We are going to wait on the sod until the end of Aug. and then hopefull have the same contractor who leveled our front to lay down the sod and install the sprinklers. It will only cost us about $1,500.

Also, the neighbors across the way have moved out. They left a note on my car (I was watching them through the window), that they were basically moving because our yard was such an eye-sore. LOL What a bunch of snots. No cops have been called recently, however they DID call the water company on us and they called the fire marshall again. This is yet another reason why we want a fence. The fire marshall had the nerve to actually walk onto MY property and inspect it. Little did he know, I was home and I was watching him. He didn't leave a fine this time, nor even a letter. I confronted him about trespassing.

The water company was called because our evil neighbors know that before we moved in, a pipe burst. (Yes, I did make sure to ask who complained. It was the evil neighbors to the right of us, on both accounts.) The water company came out and inspected our water meters, but couldn't find anything of value to report us on. We did have a leaking toilet the week before, but that was fixed within 2 days. So, they didn't even have a reason to come out and waste their time.

I also painted inside the house when it was snowing outside. Here are some pictures. This is my youngest daughter's room right after the paint job. It took us 2 days to complete, mainly because the moldings and doors were this ugly tan color and refused to turn white. (The kids' rooms are the only ones with this ugly color) (Please ignore the weird lighting, parts of the roomy ou can't see are her butterfly pictures and her curtains. We only put up the one in the picture, it is clear with pink sparkle flowers on it. The lighting was horrible, and quite honestly after I finished I gave up on painting for a very long time. Her bedsheets and blankets are white with purple and pink flowers, purple lamp, and yes...her closet is really purple. It's not even organized in that picture.)

http://tinypic.com/m/ejc5lz/4
http://tinypic.com/m/ejc5m1/4
http://tinypic.com/m/ejc5m8/4
http://tinypic.com/m/ejc5mb/4
http://tinypic.com/m/ejc5mc/4