They say good fences make good neighbors. In our case, a great fence made our terrible neighbor disappear entirely.
When Nate and I bought our waterfront home, we never imagined our biggest challenge would come from next door. Tammy greeted us with a bombshell – she believed our backyard was communal property. The legal documents said otherwise, but Tammy lived in her own reality.
Her audacity peaked when she threw a massive party on our lawn without permission. As we stared at the invasion of strangers, Tammy actually told us we weren’t invited to our own property! Things escalated when her guests started harassing us to use our bathroom.
We responded by building the mother of all privacy fences and creating an outdoor oasis that put her shabby gatherings to shame. Tammy’s reaction? She called the cops (who laughed at her), sent her boyfriend to bully us (he got arrested), and then started a campaign of late-night noise and littering.
The turning point came when her rental went up for sale. Buying that property was the most satisfying purchase of my life. Serving Tammy with her eviction notice was even better. Watching her move out weeks early with her apologetic mother in tow was the perfect ending.
Now we’re enjoying our peaceful paradise and vetting new tenants carefully. The moral of the story? Sometimes you have to build literal barriers against toxic people – and sometimes life gives you the chance to remove them completely.
