Got my posse together

Well, dh and I had a really good long "fence chat" with Mr. Neighbor yesterday, about the 8000 sq. ft steel building and running of a business to be done on the 2 lots on the other side of us. He was completely 100% in agreement with us on all of it. Thank God! I told him of the email I had written to the neighborhood, but not sent yet, as I was waiting for dh to call lot#6 owners and get an email address for them. I'm guessing at some point soon we will probably all have a little community get together to discuss it all and figure out what we can do.

Mr. knows our county attorney, so he said he is going to take our covenants in to him to look over and see if he has any advice and it sounds like he will do that this week. That should be very helpful, I hope.

Dh then called the guy for lot 6 and got their email. He didn't go into what I was going to email about and then the guy said they had been by recently and saw dh's wood beams laid out and wondered what that was for, so dh explained that to him. I guess they were going to stop and say hello, but when they saw the beams that also are in front of our gate, they thought maybe we were gone for awhile, so that's why they were there. From the sounds of it, they do plan on building their home here in 3 years, when his wife can retire. They have already made arrangements and are building a small 800 sf cabin on her dad's nearby 30 acres, so they can live in that while they are building here. DH didn't tell him what I was sending the email about, he just said my wife has an email she wants to send out to all the neighbors and property owners.

Basically, in the email I told them what the guy has said his plans are for building and how I think it violates our covenants. I also told of his telling us he's going to get a dump truck (in addition to the heavy equipment he already owns) and start bidding on local jobs and that when we said "you aren't planning and running a business out of this property are you? You can't per the covenants", that he sidestepped the question and his wife said it would be alright because they would keep the equipment inside. I also told of his plan to add another access to our street, from the state hwy. In a p.s. I gave a link to the company he said was going to build the steel building and found one of the combo shop/living quarters buildings as an example, except his would be almost 3 times that size.

Awhile after we got done talking w/Mr. Neighbor I sent out the email to Mr & Mrs. Neighbor, the young couple that live on the last lot and the out of state owners of lot 6. Very shortly after the out of state owner replied to the email and was in agreement with me on the covenants. He said the reason they bought their lot was because of the covenants and it being a residential neighborhood. Then not too long later the lady on lot 7 texted me. She had known nothing of this couple's plans for lots 4 and 5. She said "we certainly don't want to live next to that monstrosity either!! What in the hell are they thinking, did they not even read the covenants?!"  We texted back and forth and I let her know Mr & Mrs, and lot 6 were in agreement, too, so we are all on the same page. She said she would also start doing some research into what we should do.

It was very nice to get the same feedback from all 3 of them and also to know that we are not going to be alone to fight this guy and his plans to ruin our neighborhood. As the 3 of us who live here all said, it's not going to be fun, that's for sure. I don't know if we should confront him in person, next time he is out here at his property, with this news, or just go directly to a letter that is either from all of us, (or possibly from an attorney that states he is representing all of us, though I'm sure at some point that will be necessary). Of course none of us wants to be the one that has to confront him directly, but I think if/when it has to come to it my dh and and also Mr. would do it. 

I have been on calls, texts and emails all morning with my neighbors about this. Everyone is taking part and helping figure this out, which is so good.