As I mentioned in my plum duff post, we have a Neighbour Who Hates Us (NWHU). But it wasn't always so.
When I first met this neighbour, she was quite pleasant and friendly. Probably about our age, British, often busy around her property, where she lives with her university-aged son. She has an adorable cat.
We had nice chats in the driveway or when we met putting out the recycling but I soon noticed that, as our British friend Past would say, NWHU was "one of nature's whingers."
She works from home a lot because her manager at work is just "a terrible person". She tried to sue the city when the development behind all our homes went up (about a year before we moved in). There was always something annoying her but it wasn't us, so things were fine.
We sponsored her son's rowing team; he shovelled our driveway when it snowed - and then she did it once when he couldn't. I baked cookies and brought her a bottle of wine that first Christmas. Good times.
So what went wrong?
Part of the appeal of the house we bought was that the yard was big enough to accomplish what for both of us has been a life-long dream: having a pool.
Did we feel like bourgeois shitbags for installing a pool? Sure. But did that stop us from starting the pool-building process even before we actually moved into the house? No, it did not. We met our wonderful pool contractors in January of 2022 but because they were insanely busy, we didn't break ground on the pool until March of 2023.
The pool did not come as a surprise to NWHU. I mentioned it the first day we met. She remarked on the large parts of the pool sitting next to our garage when she was over shovelling. But she never asked us anything specific about it in the 14 months before we started building, even when we had to take down a large tree in our yard (which I warned her about, because it was noisy) or when I texted to tell her work was beginning the next day.
Two days into the dig, I got an angry text from NWHU. Highlights included:
1. Why was the pool so close to HER yard (instead of in the MIDDLE of our yard, so that both sets of neighbours were "equally inconvenienced" by its existence)?
2. The pool equipment would be noisy.
3. The pool might leak and flood her property.
4. She wouldn't have any privacy. Because of the pool. In OUR yard.
5. She and her son are upset by this whole thing.
I'm not someone who thrives on confrontation, so I found this pretty upsetting. But setting aside her tone, I could understand some of her concerns. So, after consulting with Katr, I sent back a friendly but firm text. Highlights included:
1. The placement of the pool makes the most sense with our yard layout and it's within the allowable distance from the fence line.
2. I hate noise too! Our contractor assured us that the pool equipment would be the quietest available, well below the allowable noise level in our area.
3. It's a steel and concrete frame and a vinyl liner and it's dug into a hill so if there WAS, GODDESS FORBID, a leak, it would flood our property, not yours so...you're good.
4. Uh...no one wants to look in your yard, lady. But there will be landscaping for extra privacy for ALL of us.
5. Pretty sure your son doesn't give a wet shit. Maybe he would like having friendly neighbours with a pool, just saying (this was internal monologue only).
She IMMEDIATELY fired back a text, ignoring my explanations and said that our pool contractors were too focused on OUR needs and were not considering the neighbours. She finished up by saying that this was a kind, respectful neighbourhood and that we must move our pool at least 15 feet from our shared fence.
I wasn't really sure...how to respond to this.
Like, it's not like these guys showed up and started digging. It had taken us 14 months to get to this place. There had been months of planning, and official engineering reports and permits. Plus, at this point, the hole was already dug. The steel frame had already been assembled in the hole.
Moving the pool now would require getting new plans drawn up, new permits, generally a huge delay and an equally huge cost.
And also...not to be a B but...IT'S OUR FUCKING YARD.
While I overfunctioned at a level detectable from space, Katr had the brilliant idea of getting in touch with the previous owners of our house (a young, active couple with two young children) to see if they had any tips for dealing with an angry NWHU.
We texted them and explained the situation, and they had some illuminating things to say. Apparently, NWHU had been in various neighbour feuds in the past, some of which I knew about (the development behind us) and some of which I didn’t, such as a dust-up she got into the neighbours on her other side about cutting down trees in their yard.
In the end, the former owners told us that we may have to be the bigger people in the situation, although they also reminded us that it was our yard and we should do what we want. In closing, they said that NWHU was lucky to have us as neighbours because when they lived here, they had a hot tub pump that was "loud as hell" and they "partied constantly" hahahahaha (I believe it, they had an OUTDOOR TV!)
Fearful that NWHU might have some sort of legal recourse to getting our build shut down, we then double-checked with our pool contractors to make sure that we were in indeed within the limits of the permit for building the pool (we were). They told us that if we REALLY wanted to, we could move the pool a foot or two away further over the fence, but that would necessitate another day of digging and moving the steel frame. They were clearly used to people freaking out during pool builds, and it was extremely calming to talk to them.
So.
Since I had answered NWHU's first text reasonably and with all the information she was actually looking for and addressing all concerns carefully and reasonably, and since the second text was basically calling us shitheads, in the end, we decided not to respond at all, the greatest flex there is. It was extremely satisfying.
The next day, as digging continued to progress for the backfill that would go in around the pool, I heard a great laughing from the guys outdoors. I looked out the kitchen window to see that NWHU had begun to hang a ragtag series of tarps along her fence line. Because...privacy.
Privacy side note: I feel I should point out here that we are the only rancher surrounded by two-story houses. Literally all of our neighbours can see directly into our yard from their second story, windows or balconies. Also, our yard has a slope, so if you walk up the slope to the back of the yard, we also can see into most everybody’s yard just by lifting our head near the fence. So it’s not like she has complete bubble of total privacy that’s been viciously pierced by where the pool is.
We texted the old owners about the tarps and they laughed. "Oh yeah," they said, "The tarps! She put those up when the other neighbour did some landscaping along their fence line that she did not like. And put them at the back when the new construction was behind her house."
Personally, I found the tarps to be a great solution. She didn’t have to worry about our trades looking into her yard. I didn’t have to see her fuck face. We started referring to her as "Our Lady of the Tarps" and I figured that once the digging was done, we'd all just carry on with possibly a bit more of a chill between us.
The end. HAHAHAHAHAHA OMG JUST KIDDING THINGS GOT SO WEIRD YOU GUYS STAY TUNED
And now, a long-overdue 50x50 update:
French lessons: 38
Boardgame plays: 24
5km walks: 27
Hours of knitting: 16
Dips in the pool: 50!!!!!
