Don’t Lean on the Garden Wall

When we viewed this house before purchasing, the estate agents had no access to the backdoor key which meant we were unable to view the garden directly. We cared not, by the time we reached the front hallway we already knew we would be putting in an offer. So when we actually moved in, it was quite strange to view the garden for the first time. Actually weirdly enough, we never got the chance the view the garden of the first house we ever purchased – it was an evening viewing, pitch black and the house had no outside light.. We relied on the estate agents pictures to ensure it had an enclosed garden… Can you tell we’re totally over-fussy buyers, right? Ha. But back to this house – we moved in and realised the garden wall was somewhat leaning inwards. Not that this bothered us mind, did I mention how we’re such fussy buyers?

Anywho, it’s been a niggling problem sat in the garden that we’ve chosen to ignore. We don’t actually know who owns the wall; these things are never easy to decipher within the land registry, you need to have gone to law school just to understand the language they’re written in! But also, it’s somewhat common (such as in our case) where the land registry makes no comment about who owns what wall anyway, and neither is it shown on the map. To add further complexities in our instance, the house next door has been split into three flats, and on the other side of this wall is two parking spaces – so we could have three neighbours with possible rights, confusing much?! Indeed. What we should have done is asked our solicitor to investigate further perhaps… But I’m an easy-going kinda girl, and these things never seem very important.

That being said, I do also realise that lots of people don’t view these things in the same care-free kind of way. Actually you’re not meant to paint, hang, or fix anything to a shared garden wall without the other sides permission. But do people really care about these rules? Actually, many do, so it’s always in the interest to step carefully around these things.. So with that being said, I’m not about to take a sledgehammer to this wall any time soon.

However, I am going to try and support it against further damage. It looks as though it’s been hit (probably by a car) on the other side of the wall; it’s cracked, leaning, the bricks are lose and short of taking it down and starting again, there isn’t too much we can do to fix the problems. However, we like to try! So one very sunny afternoon I took a bucket of mortar out into the garden and did some repointing to re-cement the cracks and hopefully stop the damage spreading further. It’s not going to do much, but until we can speak with the landlords of next door and have the time and a priority to rebuild the wall, we’re going with a ‘fill over the cracks’ kind of attitude, and ‘out of sight, out of mind’. Plus, I kind-of really don’t want to rebuild this wall any time soon anyway. It’s survived so far in its current condition, so I have some hope it’ll survive a little longer!

But for now, just don’t lean on that garden wall.