Homestead – Page 2 – Dishers.com

April 8, 2009

Get Off My Land! (part 2)

A few weeks ago I wrote about a survey that we had done and the encroachments that it turned up. (read about that here)

Today was ‘D-Day’ for the fence up front. We tried to be a good neighbor. We contacted our neighbors, an elderly couple who ‘rents’ the property.

We informed them of the survey, and the results. Actually the first call was a month ago, and I left a very detailed message asking if they needed or wanted to keep the fence, if so we’d need to get a legal document (at their expense) that acknowledges that they have part of our property fenced in.

That phone call was not returned, so Claudine tried.

Things went from bad to worse. Both of our neighbors acted like complete a-holes. We tried to reason with them, and I was very impressed with Claudine and the way she handled them on the phone.

Despite being treated poorly we still took the high road (not my idea mind you). However, I was no longer in any position to grant them a favor. No documents, the fence had to be moved or we’d move it.

So we sent them a certified letter indicating that today (the 8th) was the day that if they had not removed the fence that we’d do it and we stuck to our guns. We ended up giving them more than two weeks. Plenty of time for them to hire a lawyer to stop us and/or get their own survey. (Which would have been pointless).

So we started bright an early this morning. I was somewhat disappointed that the neighbors didn’t even bother to show up and put up a fight. Especially given the attitude they presented on the phone. In the back of my mind I was prepared to find one of them chained to the fence in protest. But that didn’t happen.

With the aid of our Farmers BobCat and Chain we were able to pull all of the trees and fence posts on the fence line that we wanted.

We even managed to get 18 little pine trees planted.

It was still a very long day though and I’m glad it’s over.

Before:

After:

From Fence No More

More photos online here

It was a very satisfying day.

March 16, 2009

Get Off My Land!

Man have things changed. We’re no longer the hip young couple in the old farm house. We’ve moved on to being the crotchety couple in the farm house (though we have yet to garner the classification of ‘old’). The old people are what started this.

We have a decent amount of land just outside of Trenton Ohio that surrounds the 3 acres that our house sits on. On that 13 acres, my in-laws are building a house. Ask me in 5-10 years if that was a good idea or not.

As a result of this we (they) had to have our property surveyed so that we could get a legal description of the land we’re giving them (or allowing them) to build on.

This has turned up two areas of encroachment. One we were aware of and one that we were not.

In the front of our property (see drawing), we knew there was a small triangular piece of property that is actually ours. The previous owners told us about it when we bought the place. But they had a gentleman’s agreement with the neighbor at the time to allow them to fence a squared off area. When we moved in they had goats in that small field, and later a cow.

Those neighbors have since moved on, a victim of the mortgage crisis before there was a crisis. (More a victim of common sense than anything but I digress). The new owner uses the property as rental property. When we met them we discussed the area in question but it wasn’t a big deal to us. Now that the land has been surveyed it is a big deal.

It seems if you don’t protect your property, it will be squatted on and you’ll lose it. By us continuing to permit them to have our land fenced, we’re risking losing it. 20 feet of road frontage is not something we wish to lose so we now we need to enforce the property lines. As it turns out, the entire west side of the neighbors fence is on our property and will likely need to be removed.

We have an issue at the back of our property as well.

The Delaware Crossing subdivision behind us and to the west is legendary. It’s been tied up in legal issues from day one. The builder we believe went bankrupt and the City of Trenton now owns the property.

At the back of our property, there’s a small park for the subdivision. A couple basketball courts, and play equipment.

The problem is where they ran the walking path, or the access path to get to this park. It was originally supposed to go between two houses as you can see in the picture. But apparently the folks who live in those houses didn’t like that. So the neighbor closest to us suggested they run it along our fence line and his side yard. The developer agreed. The only problem was they paid no attention to the property lines.

It looks something like this:

The sad part about it, is that they had to tear down some of our fence to make this happen.

So here we go again. We have to re-establish our boundaries or we risk losing this piece of land.

Our initial thought was to simply lease it to them. But there is no ‘them’. The homeowners association in Delaware Crossing is defunct. The city now maintains the park, well they city and the residents that back up to it somewhat share that burden.

If we fence it, it will block their access. They won’t be able to get a vehicle back to the part without tearing up our neighbors yard, and even then it will be tight, very tight.

We’ve talked to them and they will likely fence from our fence to their house which will kill all access to the park.

The City is encouraging us to put our fence back. If people can’t use the park they don’t have to maintain it.

So the question becomes, what kind of fence? Because what ever we put back there will be vandalized, you can count on that.

So if you have any ideas or suggestions, post them up we’re all ears. Of course we want to enforce all of this with as little out of pocket expense as possible.

November 13, 2008

Mouse kill update.

Trap	Type	# Kills
	The high-tech snap trap. Covered, safer, easy to empty and reuse.	5
All others	Glue Traps and what not	0

5 in one season is a record, let alone in just 3 days.

It’s a mouse infestation I tell you. Though I think we’ve gotten most of the family.

Stay tuned.

November 11, 2008

To catch a mouse.

There are plenty of benefits to living out in the country (or out in the sticks as some would call it).

One issue though is that every winter, the little field mice decide they need somewhere warm to stay, and our house is the closest thing around. So we’re it. Hotel de’Mice if you will.

It happens every fall, and every fall we run out and buy a few mouse traps.

We’ve found mouse traps to be the most effective. Poison works too, but then those little suckers go into a corner, wall or the crawl space to die. Then they rot and smell like, well, rotting mice. So that’s best to be avoided.

This year I decided to try a couple different traps.

Trap	Type	# Kills
	The high-tech snap trap. Covered, safer, easy to empty and reuse.	2
	a flat glue trap.	0
	a tunnel like glue trap (a little paper box with glue on all sides, I guess once the go in, they don’t come out).	0
	Your standard snap trap, wood, with spring loaded scull crusher.	Not currently deployed.

I know for a fact the standard snap trap works. We used them a lot last year, but they can be kind of messy when the scull crusher hits them just right. So Sunday I put out one of the tunnel traps, 2 of the flat black glue traps, and one of the high-tech snap traps.

The high-tech snap trap is all plastic and it’s covered. They go in and don’t come out. Since it’s covered, it’s less likely to get ‘you’ when you set it. That’s a good thing, and if the dog, or kids happen to touch it it won’t get them either.

Since it’s covered, the little mouse brains tend to stay inside the box when the skull crusher activates. It also has a nice little bait cup for putting a dab of peanut butter.

This trap has caught 2 mice in two days. The glue traps? nadda.

I’m thinking about going back to the store and picking up a couple more. They aren’t as cheap though. $5 each instead of $3 for a four pack of the standard snap traps, but so far are well worth it and easy to empty.

I’m also considering the kind that electrocutes them. Somehow this just seems well, not really more humane, but more high-tech.

I’ll update the stats per trap type as the killing season progresses.

October 22, 2008

Home Depot = Good, Pegasus brand = Bad

Once upon a time we bought a new kitchen faucet. We didn’t go all out, but we did spend more than we wanted. We bought a Pegasus Brand faucet. It looked good, and felt nice. Retail at the time was around $180. Similar faucets by Mowen and Delta cost about 20% more or $10-$40 more than the Pegasus.

The one we purchased was this one:

Well, not exactly this one. Ours is model K-300 but it looks exactly the same but the new model is K-700.

We had it a few months and the pull-out handle thing literally broke off, as in the plastic that screwed into the hose snapped. Granted our son got a little frustrated and banged on it, though it should have taken more abuse.

Since my son did the breaking (or so we thought) we made him pay for the faucet, or at least 1/2 if I recall correctly.

We couldn’t find parts online anywhere so we went to the Home Depot and purchased an entire new faucet to get the parts. That was less than a year ago (I think).

Well tonight, Maggie while washing some dishes, pulled the handle out and it snapped right off, just like the last one. Only this time, well there wasn’t any abuse or force.

Needless to say we (at least I) was a tad frustrated. Again we looked online. Turns out Pegasus is a home brand for Home Depot. There is no obvious way to get parts and I’ll be damned if I was going to cough up another $180 for another faucet. If that was the case I was getting something else.

So, long story short, we called Home Depot and told them our tale of woe. The kind return lady said, no problem if we have the same thing come in and get the parts.

When we got there, she looked up the price of the faucet and was shocked. “There’s no way you should have had to buy another one last time. I’m giving you refund for the 2nd faucet.” (Score).

So we picked up the new handle, and got a store credit for the new sale price ($149) which, in my book is a good thing.

Home Depot did right by us tonight and we’ll continue to shop there because of it. We will budget for a new faucet, I have no doubt we’ll be in the same broken faucet boat in another 6-9 months. It’s a poor design. Perhaps the new K-700 is different, but I’m not taking any chances.

(Searching the net you can find a lot of people complaining about Pegasus faucets, so buyer beware).