The inspector measured twice.
Then he asked Whitney’s contractor for the approved site plan.
The new deck extended beyond the permitted footprint and crossed into the required setback. Worse, part of its framing had been positioned using the space created when my fence was illegally removed.
The project was stopped that afternoon.
Whitney insisted the survey had to be wrong. The contractor did not agree. He had relied on the boundary information she provided, and once the licensed survey contradicted it, he wanted everything documented before another board was installed.
My attorney sent Whitney a demand for the cost of replacing the cedar fence, repairing the damaged ground, and restoring the property exactly where it had stood.
Then her contractor revised the deck.
To comply with the setback, nearly half the new framing had to be dismantled and rebuilt farther inside her yard.
The delay, additional labor, permit revisions, and replacement fence cost far more than simply leaving my property alone would have.
Whitney eventually knocked on my door and called the whole situation an expensive misunderstanding.
“You removed something from my land without asking,” I replied. “The misunderstanding happened before you picked up the first tool.”
A month later, my new cedar fence went up along the original line.
Her smaller deck sat safely on the other side.
Whitney had laughed about five inches of property.
By the time the inspectors and contractors finished measuring them, those inches had become the most expensive part of her renovation.
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