The New Neighbors

I bought our house here in Pigeon Point 6 years ago now, and the last two years have seen an abundance of accelerating change. Lots of new neighbors further up the street, lots of house-flips over the hill, and recently lots of change with the immediate neighbors. It started two years ago when the “drug house” 3 doors down was sold and cleaned up. Then our neighbor to the north fixed up and sold his house. This spring the house across the street sold for way too much money and is currently undergoing rennovation to be flipped. Last week they began grading the vacant 2 doors to the North in preparation for 3 skinny houses (ugh). And today we have new neighbors in the house immediately South of us.

I don’t know if they read our blog, so I’ll be nice…

They have two dogs - a 100lb bulldog, and a 10-year-old pitbull. Believe me, I’m not crazy about this. I cheered when my other neighbor to the north moved away with his two barking beagles. (Mike, you were a great neighbor but I wasn’t crazy about your dogs.) Now we’ve got a new set of potentially dangerous dogs next door, and a toddler who loves to pet anything with fur. We met the neighbors and their dogs the other night and they assured us the dogs are friendly, neutered, and well behaved. The new neighbors do seem like responsible people so I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. What choice do I have?

Today they’re preparing to move in. Their front yard until today had 10’ tall hedges separating it from ours, and from the sidewalk. They’re out there now cutting that down and I’m a bit sad to see it go. It wasn’t the prettiest hedge, but it did afford us a lot of privacy. In its place will be a new fence to keep the dogs in the yard.

This hedge removal / fence building is a big piece of work. In my estimate it’s gonna take him a few solid days just to get the hedge removed, then a few more (of tough tough digging) to get the fence posts in place. He says he’s got big plans for the inside of the house too - combining the two small bedrooms, removing a wall between the kitchen / dining area, and redoing the floors. Oh, and new dormers up top sometime in the future.

From what I can tell he wants to complete the majority of this work before they move in two weeks. If he succeeds I’ll be pretty impressed.