Who's financially responsible for installing a boundary fence?
When the neighbor's do-it-yourself fence installation didn't work out as intended
When I walked in my friend’s backyard, I could tell something was “off” but couldn’t narrow down what it was. His yard looked the same — but different. As I kept walking from the garage to the back door, I realized one side of his fence was leaning like it was drunk. At the end of the fence was a pile of rocks and bricks.
I pointed at the pile, and he made a motion toward his dog.
“I don’t want her to climb into the neighbor’s yard again,” he explained. “There’s a gap now, and my dog can squeeze through. She ended up in their yard once before.”
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I turned back to look at the “drunk” fence again and realized that that was what looked different. His neighbor decided to “build” a wooden privacy fence to replace the prior diamond mesh fencing. However, it was pretty clear that the neighbor was in over his head and the wooden fence didn’t quite look like it does in home improvement ads. With way too many gaps in between the wooden panels, leaning to one side and clearly not enough of a solid foundation to hold it in place, a Chicago windy day could knock the whole thing over.
“This looks a mess,” I mumbled and let out a giggle. “Like it had one too many drinks.”
He shushed me immediately, looking around to see if the neighbor was in his own yard.
“Be quiet,” he hissed. “He’s my electrician. I don’t want to upset him in case I need some electrical work done again.”
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I dramatically touched my heart before reminding this guy that he called the condo rental I once lived in a “chicken coop” after my own landlord decided she was going to build a fence* for our three-story building instead of paying fencing contractors. I’m not saying her DIY fence was pretty, but it didn’t look like Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” choreography.
He scowled at me before I could demonstrate my King of Pop reference, so I mimed zippers across my lips and left the topic alone. But as we walked into the back doors leading into his kitchen, I wondered a couple of things:
Would he be held financially responsible if he tore down this DIY fence and had a fencing contractor install it correctly?
Who’s financially responsible for installing a party fence (or boundary fence) in backyards anyway?