Building Walls and Fences in Suburbia

Our house is still fairly new and while we are living in it now there is still a lot that needs to get finished off. We’re in a new estate and so there is a lot of building still going on around us, none more important for us than the next door neighbor who has just put up their house frame and so their build is progressing nicely...

Of course, I want to have good relations with my neighbors and so when we first moved in I was mowing their spare block for them Pro Bono to keep the snakes down and make sure the place still looked nice. While my wife and I wanted a fence on that side so that we could close off our yard for our kids to play in, we agreed to wait and allow them to put some retaining wall on the boundary to then put a fence on top of it and let them maximize the space of their block.

In hindsight that was probably a mistake for us. Here we are many months later after the builders next door stalled and delayed and now they’ve finally put the retaining wall in, but in some parts it doesn’t come up to the natural ground level. That sucks, but now it’s time to finally get the fence up and our neighbor wants to do the job himself...

He seems like a decent guy and is obviously “Handy” on the tools, but I have some trust issues. My wife wants it done yesterday, but I’m more concerned about the unspecified costs and the quality of the job. The last thing I want is for them to sell up 12 months later and then have to deal with a shoddy fence with a new neighbor that ends up seeing me pay for the job twice.

I am a big believer in showing goodwill and I know I need to take this job on faith to some extent. Who wants to get off on the wrong foot and have angst with a neighbour for 15 years over something relatively minor? I know most people don’t think like me though and I often come off 2nd best in situations like this. I’m kind of sick of that, but what can you do?