Our property borders six different neighbors' property. Sometimes our neighbors construct unexpected things right on our border. This time we were surprised to find a tall, slender concrete column right across from our own tall, more robust concrete column. The electric company requires such a column to be installed near the road before they will place an electric meter there for a house, but we weren't expecting our neighbor to install his new post right across from ours! We had goalposts!
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| Our column can be seen on the left by the boy, and our neighbor's column is on the right by the ladder |
Pulling into our driveway was already tight due to its narrow width, but this new post would make it even more challenging. It was so poorly built that Michael could make it sway just by pushing on it. (We were glad to note that he couldn't make ours sway.) And it was built right on the edge of our drainage ditch which becomes soft dirt in rainy season. So in the event of even a slight earthquake, this post was in serious danger of falling and hitting our electric column or our gate to the street.
So Michael talked to our neighbor about tearing it down and moving it to the other side of his property. In fact, they had six separate negotiating discussions because our neighbor was reluctant to do anything. Michael even talked to our neighbor's dad a couple of times in the process.
In the end, due to Michael's persistence, our neighbor finally agreed to our offer. We ended up paying the price for a new post to be built (according to the overly high price he quoted us, plus paying a bonus for his "bother"), and we agreed to take down the old post ourselves.
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| Our workers used a demolition hammer to take off the top part in two sections until it was short enough not to hit our post or gate. |
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| Then they pulled the remaining part down with guiding ropes. |
At the writing of this blog post, there has still been no new column construction yet, so we are hoping and praying he keeps his end of the deal.