Dean stood on my porch and told me the cones marked “the corrected property boundary.” Apparently, during their renovation, a contractor had convinced him that nearly four feet of my gravel driveway belonged to the Whitlocks. I asked whether he had a survey. He did not. Three days later, I hired a licensed surveyor myself. The stakes went into the ground on Friday morning, and the result was even better than I expected: my driveway was entirely mine, and the true boundary actually ran eighteen inches farther toward Dean’s house than the old fence suggested.

That explained what happened next. Dean had already hired workers to move the fence and spread decorative stone across part of my driveway without permission. I photographed everything, kept the survey, and sent him written notice to restore the disturbed gravel. He laughed and told me nobody was going to fight over “a few feet of dirt.” So I stopped arguing and called the city about permits before having a new fence installed exactly where the surveyed boundary allowed.