For those of you who know Adam and I well you know that buying our first house a little over a year ago was fulfilling one of our many dreams. It was such a blessing and we couldn’t believe how lucky we were to accomplish such a huge goal. The house has been more than we could have expected and as time goes on it has truly become our home and our sanctuary from all that life throws at us. We have so many great memories within those walls in such a short time. The house has hosted BBQ’s, baby showers, a new puppy, long talks, stressful evenings, laughter, whiskey, wine and so much love. The house is also the basis for so many more dreams in our future: maybe a baby and a family of our own, renovations and improvements, big family holidays, and many more great moments with family and friends.
Sadly however, this home has also had a dark cloud pass over it from time to time. From the moment we moved in we have had some issues with our neighbors. Until last night we just never really knew how big those issues were. But let me start from the beginning, or at least where we first became aware of these issues. Our neighborhood is in a “golf course community,” which basically means we have a very strict HOA with limitations on everything down to the type of fence we can have in our backyard. As I’m sure you can imagine anytime you share a fence with someone (especially a tiny little fence with no privacy) there are bound to be some issues. Well our problems started in the form of Delilah, a beautiful, very large, very loud Doberman Pincher. I want to preface this by saying that when her owners are home Delilah is an incredibly well behaved dog. One word from her owners and she runs right onto their back deck and immediately stops barking. However when they aren’t home it is a completely different story. She barks incessantly (and trust me her bark is one of the loudest I think I have ever heard), she chases people walking by, and when we first moved in she jumped the fence between our houses and made herself at home in our backyard… Now Adam and I are HUGE dog lovers!!! We have two wonderful dogs of our own and we have a serious soft spot for dogs. That being said Delilah drove us crazy from the get go and when she first jumped our fence I think we were well on our way to having some serious problems with our neighbors. With tiny little Gizmo in our backyard the thought of a “big old bad Doberman” being able to jump in our yard at anytime made me very very nervous. And the constant barking was also exceedingly annoying. BUT as time went on Delilah seemed to understand that we were there to stay and that she should probably stay in her own yard. The barking never stopped but we decided not to make waves in our new neighborhood and kept our mouths shut. But that didn’t spare us from getting swept into neighborhood politics. We were quickly the topic of gossip, and the story was that we had called the cops on our neighbors and reported Delilah. Now I would be lying if I said we hadn’t considered it, in moments of weakness when we were at our wits end, but that simply isn’t how we are. We did not report Delilah; we had the truth on our side and that was that. We weren’t going to let it get to us.
Ok so this story is in serious danger of getting way too long, so I’m going to fast forward a year. Delilah is still barking but staying out of our yard (hey small victories), our neighbors still obviously dislike us, they’ve gotten another Doberman Pincher (so now they have 3 dogs) and now the big issue has become the war for parking in front of our own house. Did I mention our neighbors have renters living in their basement? No? Oh, well they do! So they have 5 cars (oh and new addition, a motorcycle) for one house. This could possibly work, since they have a 3 car garage, and a nice sized driveway, so technically they could park 6 cars at their house without disturbing a soul. But with one stall of the garage packed with storage (I get it, we all have excess stuff and it needs a home too) and the fact that they don’t want to try and switch cars back and forth between the garage and the driveway pad (I get this too, total pain) that leaves the renters with 2 cars without a home… So seeing as how they have two spaces in front of their house, this shouldn’t be a problem. WRONG! Apparently if they park on the other side of their house (furthest from us) then the owner of the home has an issue maneuvering his truck around them and pulling out into the street. So this is where we get involved. The parking area shared by our house and their house can reasonably fit probably 3 cars but 2 without crowding each other, technically the parking on our side of the “property line” is bigger. Whatever no biggie right? Well it’s become a biggie because they don’t try to park as closely to their house as possible. They park one of their cars (a very large LOUD truck that leaks oil all over) as closely to our driveway as possible (which just so happens to be right outside our bedroom window. Did I mention how LOUD the truck is? Oh I did.) Anyway over the past year or so we have resorted to childish acts to defend “our space;” parking in front of our house so they can’t (and no we aren’t particularly proud of this)… well this just led them to park on the other side our house… much further from their house, thus boxing in our tiny 2 car garage and little driveway.
Ok so to bring this incredibly long story to the point… last night this whole debacle came to a head. We put our trashcans out Thursday night, where the HOA tells us to, in the ditch. And we woke up yesterday morning to our neighbor’s truck bumper completely pushed up against our trashcans. Ok so in our world this was the last straw and last night when our neighbor got home Adam decided to go outside and talk to him (I know I know we should have done this a long time ago, it is after all the grownup thing to do.) As you can imagine the conversation started off pretty heated, but once both guys calmed down and were able to really discuss the issues a lot of things became very clear. In our eyes the renters were always the main bad guys in this story, but we couldn’t be more wrong. Our neighbor the renter, let’s call him Matt so this doesn’t get too confusing, filled Adam in on the other side of the story. Apparently shortly after we moved in someone actually did call the cops on Delilah (and I want to be perfectly honest here, it was not us) and since, unknown to us, the homeowner let’s call him Steve works one day a week for the police department the police showed up at his door and told him that once again (ok so the whole “once again” comment probably needs a little explanation, don’t worry I’ll get to it) it looks like the new neighbors have a problem with Delilah. SOOOO cue Steve instantly hating us and having a ton of animosity spewing in our direction for telling on his dog (ok now I get it! I would be angry too.) But things got worse when Matt (the renter) brought home the big loud truck for the first time, and once again the cops show up at their door and fill Steve in on a tattle tale neighbor complaining about Matt’s new loud truck (once again I promise, no matter how irritated we were, we did not call the cops.) AND about a month ago while Matt and his girlfriend were out of town he left his truck parked in front of our house for a week or so without moving it (yes we were angry, no, even then we did not call the cops) and one more time someone calls the cops to report an abandoned vehicle. Ok so looking at things from their perspective I would be livid at the tattle tale neighbors. However, unfortunately for us, the anger and animosity was directed at the wrong people. Matt also explained to Adam that prior to us moving into our house it has always been kind of the black sheep of the block. The house was a rental so there was lots of turnover, then it was a foreclosure, and then a flip. So our beautiful home has had some anger directed towards it long before we moved in. And according to Matt, several other people who lived in our house have also called the cops on Steve, Delilah, Matt and their household. So to me this all seems pretty fishy, obviously there is someone else in the neighborhood that has a problem with them and instead of just coming out and saying it they decide to report them every time someone new moves in so that the new kids on the block (Us) get blamed. Now where things really got nasty is when Steve, based on all this anger directed at the wrong people, decided that they were going to make our lives as inconvenient as possible. He then instructed Matt to park as close to our driveway as possible just to make us mad. He also began telling the whole neighborhood what horrible neighbors we were, and lastly threatened to (now this is a little fuzzy, Adam didn’t quite get what Matt meant by this) falsify a picture to get us in trouble, something along the lines of taking a picture of their house and photo shopping a picture of our car in their driveway or something along those lines. Crazy right?
So once Matt and Adam talked for a while they worked out the whole car situation and everyone is going to try and be more understanding and flexible in the future. Matt also seemed to accept that we weren’t the ones calling the cops. Ok so that fixes one problem. This unfortunately doesn’t solve our problem with Steve, and according to Matt he can be quiet difficult (yay!) So at some point in the near future we HAVE to talk to him and try to clear up this whole misunderstanding. Insert big sigh here. I don’t particularly want to sit down and have a discussion with a man that put a hit out on my house the moment we moved in, I don’t particularly want to try to convince him that we are not the people he should be angry with and that no, we didn’t call the cops, and I certainly don’t want to validate all his horrible actions by begging for him to accept us and stop telling the whole neighborhood lies. BUT I know it has to be done. And I pray that this will help us establish a new relationship; one that isn’t based on lies and anger; but maybe mutual trust and respect. I don’t know maybe it’s a long shot but we have to try something because we don’t want OUR neighborhood to hate us and we don’t want to continually be blamed for everything that is wrong with our block. We love our house, and overall we really truly love our neighborhood. We would like to stay here for some time and continue to increase our property value and in turn boost everyone else’s property value with it. We no longer want to be the black sheep of the neighborhood. So here goes nothing! I’m sure I’ll be back to tell everyone how it went!
And just a note to other homeowners or future homeowners to help you learn from our mistakes:
- Introduce yourself right away to all your neighbors, even if you’re a little shy and find this difficult, it could save you from nasty rumors in the future. We can’t help but think if only our other neighbors just had a chance to get to know us that they would know we are good people.
- If you have a problem with one of your neighbors make sure and address it right away. We let this continue for far too long and now we are suffering the consequences.
- Don’t jump to conclusions. Just because there is a new couple on the block it doesn’t automatically make them the guilty party when things go wrong. Giving people a chance to speak for themselves can often be very enlightening….
xoxo ~Jamie
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