So this is how my neighbor fixes his fence.

I wish I was lucky enough to be a homeowner complaining about 2 mismatched fenceposts
- Check where you are, because come on, that's the whole point of this community
  
  Wait, are we in mildyinfuriatinghomeownerproblems?
  
  I'm more than mildly infuriated I will likely never own a home.
  
  There are things I can relate to, and this is not one of them. Hence my comment
- The 3 inch nails protruding through the rails are much more complaint-worthy than the too-tall pickets.
  
  They don't even come close to the home owners fence bro
  
  What if they were 9 inch nails instead? I've heard people like them
- Good news is that many landlords excel at this level of craftsmanship.
- I also wish the same for us both. But I'd like to remind you, people who rent can also find themselves complaining about the neighbour's mismatched fenceposts
- I don't know if you meant for it to come off this way or not, but to me it reads like you're saying people who own homes shouldn't complain about small things. Someone else always has it worse. That doesn't mean those who are better off have no right to complain about things that annoy them (especially on the community made for complaining about mildly infuriating things).
  
  I think it's the fact OP is calling their neighbor an asshole for fixing their fence in a less than perfect way that really irked me. I get annoyed when privileged people want to play the victim; it's something I know I should work on, but right now it's a part of my character.

What screws?
- Yeah, Id be going back out there with a hammer and poking those nails back through the board just enough to make it flush. let the neighbor loose an eye if they want to half ass that.
- "Screws? Where we are going, we don't need screws"
- Has a nail gun but no table saw
- I read it as "they can't afford saw and screws"
- yeah i'd go hammer them back in. safetyfirst

It's not just the posts. The neighbor used nails that are way too long. IMO that's a safety hazard.
- Ram it, get tetanus. Sue.
- Yeah most definitely though I’d also consider its best to get longer nails than shorter ones nails mainly on a limited budget.

- What and deprive the nail gnomes of their jobs?
- Fuck that. Hit them with a hammer until the points are flush with the fence and the heads stick out on his side. It's your yard and property...
  EDIT: Never mind, it looks like the fence wasn't exactly on the property line...
  
  Looks like the fence might not be on the property line. On OP’s side there is a smaller fence.
  
  Not their fence.
- or just cut the exposed part of the nails using an oscillating tool? No need to be petty.
  
  What's the point of living if I can't be petty?
- Hahahaha.
  I appreciate your patience

Maybe he is slowly upgrading it to a taller fence. Only 328 more to go.
- I was just talking to someone who wants to replace their fence. Planks are expensive right now so he is as saying he would do it this way haha
- Theseus fence🤔
- Just damage the other posts...

- Probably needs to do that on the other side
- If it works but looks stupid...wait it's just plain stupid

All I see is a dude who had a limited amount of fucks to give.

That fence looks backwards according to the code I'm familiar with, unless you took this inside your neighbor's yard
- Yeah, this looks like this is OP's fence and their neighbor got sick of it
  
  Not according to the title.
  
  It looks like ops fence is the 3-4' tall fence you can see at the bottom of the pic?
  Neighbours probably installed his fence so it looks good to him, since it's not seen by anyone else but the OP
  If it were facing a street you pm would probably install it the other way
- Are there places where code actually requires the person who paid for it gets the bad side?
  I hear that a lot, but it's always just been what people said.
  
  Yes, my neighbors replaced their fence after the lockdown and I have the pretty side. There are places that make you do that. And I’m NOT in a HOA. City
  
  I could possibly see it being required by a covenant community/HOA, but code? That seems a bit out there.
- Yup, having just gone through a fence replacement thing and our city's building code - of the posts of the fence face your property, it's your fence. So either this fence was installed improperly and with the posts reversed (probably against code), or the OP is the owner of the shitty fence.
  On a side note, the other fence also looks like the posts face in - which means there are two fences on the OPs property - another building code violation where I live.
- It looks like there is a smaller fence closer to the camera that would be theirs.
- You would always have the pretty side if it’s your fence. You couldn’t attach the panels without trespassing on the neighbors property otherwise.
  
  You "always" present the nice side to others.

Not everyone is handy or knows how to use tools. Instead of a passive aggressive post on Lemmy. Perhaps talk to your neighbor comment on the fence posts and offer to fix it or show him/her how to fix it.
“Hey how is it going neighbor,I saw you fixed the fence. Love the new wood, did the hardware store not have the right length? Yeah that is a bummer, I have a saw, I’m sure I could help you get those planks evened out in a few minutes if you’d like.”
If they are a dick after that then post away.
- The proper way to address them is "Neighbor ____" with the blank being their first name. I will let the very educational comic Pearls Before Swine illustrate:
  
  I have particular skills
- And show him that nails don't need to go 2 inches past the boards you are joining.

Perhaps the neighbor is just going for a taller fence... Over time.
Yes the screw length would be a big concern.
- Neighbor is slowly transitioning to better fortifications, barbed wire will come in after the fence is taller /s
- He's trying to make each new board seam like an escalation

Those exposed screws are way worse than the mismatched boards. Safety hazard
- You mean nails?
  
  He screwed up. You nailed it.

Looks life a shared fence. Maybe you should have offered to help instead of making this post.
- Maybe that was the deal, op puts up the posts and the neighbor puts up the planks
- It looks like there's also a fence in the foreground and maybe a pathway inbetween, so I don't think it's a shared fence.
  
  The photo is also taken from the "inside" side. So it might even be his fence.
- It’s a better fence post than the one pictured

I have suspicion that you guys don't like each other.

Gonna be completely honest OP. You are really being a jackass to this person. I understand you may be displeased by the length not matching, colour even and possibly the nails. Though you have to consider most people can barely afford repairs. Also as for the nails it’s better to be safe. Get longer than shorter ones.
Have you considered just discussing the issue with them civilly. Suggest to possibly replace a few more parts of the fence or it fully as the new stable wood he put in.
Then show him how to properly replace fences. Also possibly if you have a saw for wood. Just let them know if he’s ever doing projects. He can ask or rent it from you?
- Yes, the person complaining to strangers on the internet for catharsis is the jackass and not the fucker who put multiple long fucking nails through to my side of their fucking fence. The length and color might be an eyesore and idk how that person doesn't feel embarrassed at not even half assing this, but the real big complaint is the fucking nails.
  
  Looking at it too! There’s two fences. So it wouldn’t even bother the other person. Unless hey try and squeeze between the walk way.
  
  Clip the ends of the screws off. Not much more effort than moaning on Reddit, and more useful results.
  
  Who cares. It's just a fence lol

But in 20 short years at least the color will match!

Are you sure that's not your fence?
- Yes I’m sure.
  
  Then its facing the wrong way

Post about a post. Reeeeeee
- Nailed it

As someone with buck teeth, I see no issue.
- We love a smile with character!

I agree with all the people saying cut the screws flush. Its a safety problem and you're doing him a favor
- Omg I just noticed the nails. The guy just bought the longest ones he could find.
  
  Or just used whatever he had lying around.

Cut the screw ends off and toss them back on his side of the fence so he can find them with his bare feet.
- Reverse them and let him bang into the fence

This is why you need good neighbors. Good neighbors make good fences.
- Yeah, lemme just make sure nobody shitty moves next to me really quick. I can certainly afford to be picky about where I live in the current and future housing market, too.
  /s
  Edit: whoosh for me
  
  I think you missed the joke.
  See, there's an old saying "good fences make good neighbors", meaning that a fence allows neighbors to coexist with less friction since there are less opportunities for seeing and crossing into each other's lives and yards.
  They flipped the saying around "good neighbors make good fences" because the fence here isn't that good.
  It's a nice little play on words and ideas, not then telling OP to get better neighbors
  
  You could resort to what Will Ferrell and John C Reilly did in Stepbrothers

Get your bolt cutters out and solve the nail problem. Apart from that, it’s meh.

nail edit

I imagine that's still their property, given the fence in the foreground, but those screws sticking out could have been a great slip-and-fall style multi-million dollar lawsuit my just cutting yourself a little with a "rusty" screw. My building HOA got sued for less before I moved in, and insurance just caves without checking if it's legit since that can just up the premiums.

Cut them an inch shorter than yours, and bend the nails over so they can’t be removed.

There's nothing like arborvitae or boxwoods to create a green wall of serenity that hides an ugly neighboring lot or fence. Takes a few years to establish, but man, it's well worth it. You never see the neighbor's bullshit again.

What a poor job lol. Looks like the fence has buck teeth!
Those are nails. It'd be better if they were screws as the extra length would be easy to snap off. Nails are less brittle so you need to cut them off or bend them over.

You can easily get rid of those nails sticking out with just a hammer.
Hit it from the top. Cover your eyes. Hit it from the bottom. Hit it from the top. Off it flies, good luck finding the broken off piece.
No bolt cutter needed.
- a dremel is really handy for shit like this.

It's a post post
- it's beyond the pale!
  
  I'm on the fence about that one.

bend them over before they change their mind
- Clinch them like you are building a boat?

Why do you even care?
- Presumably the fence runs between their property so they have to see it every day. Also those exposed nails could be hazardous to pets or children.
  It's also pretty trivial to cut the boards to length and use appropriate fasteners. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I suspect this kind of carelessness is present in other parts of the neighbor's life. They've probably gotten on OP's nerves before.
  
  Since the photo was taken from the inside, he either went into the neighbors side to take the photo or it's his fence.
- Found the neighbor.
- It looks like shit
  Edit: Hate HOAs? Me too. But this shit is why they exist. If people never did dumb shit like this I think there’d be fewer of them.
  
  HOAs exist is a way toaintain shared services; i.e. insurances, utilities and roads, most importantly, but also things like clubhouses. Shit like this comes secondary.

Fence of Theseus...

Bet they don't own a table saw and this is the length the store sold them at.
- Or maybe, they're trying to make it taller the ship of Theseus way.
  
  Also my first thought! I wanted to do that with a deck once but that's a little unwiser.
- No table saw needed. You could use a 10 dollar hand saw from horrible freight, measure the length and pull from the finish end and cut it like a normal person.
  I guess it's good he didn't cut them to match so it stands out for the guy who pulls weeds in between the property lines. They'd be less likely to get stabbed by a 16 penny nail. Even getting scraped by a nail hurts like fuck. Anyone dismissing the nail portion of this job as "ok" or "have a friendly conversation" is missing as many brain cells as the person who fixed this fence.

This is just book-version Hermione Granger
- book-version Hermione Granger
  Pre-densaugeo

Buckfence ass bitch

He probably decided he didn’t have a way to cut those 45 degree angles and so there was no way to make those boards like the rest.
- Cut it off the bottom then?
  And use way shorter hardware to affix the boards.
  
  That's the joke.
  
  Yeah I should definitely have included the /s here LOL my bad

So they have a hammer but no saw

I'd hammer the nails back out into their side.

I had a uncle who could have cut those perfectly with a chain saw.

Its crazy how many peeps here cant see there are two separate fences with a no mans land gap between. It's really weird because Ive seen this on properties more often then I would've expected I would.
One of the most common scenarios ive seen this is when neighbor A has a pool and put the required perimeter fence for the pool but not at the property line. Also the pool and fence would be installed first. Then neighbor B put up a fence after and told the cobtractor to run their property line. I say contractor because they do as told by person paying, if it was diy fence by owner theu wouldve talked to neighbor and butted the fences back to back w/ no gap. It'd explain the neighbor not caring about the protruding screw out the back because they've never seen a single person between the two fences the entire time they put the fences up.
Other scenarios are quick fix to contain animal till full fence replacing is installed. Or neighbor with bucktooth fence, from the picture angle, looks like they have no sight line to that part of fence from house and said fucked if I care.

Looks good imo.

Had similar scenario this summer at new house. Solution? We built a 10 ft fence.
Just add more wall when needed.
- I don't know many places that permit 10 ft fences. In more urban areas, you're limited to six or eight feet.
  
  Texas suburban cul-de-sac, one side is road facing with tree/shrub coverage so it's not obstrusive from the roadway.
  The yard also sits probably a foot down from the main ground level so it doesn't look out of place, the alternative would have been a 6/8 ft fence with like 2 ft vine trellace

you need to put a one brown board for the stink

Ain't that America! Home of the free, baby! Busted old fences for you and me!
- Weird, I assumed this is some British petulance. I wonder.

Does it stop things getting through the fence?
If yes then it's a legally perfect fence.
The screws is probably the only thing that they need to fix up. That's a safety issue but besides that, nothing wrong with that fence.
Edit: on further inspection that fence isn't even on the property line, so it's a non issue.
My guess is there's a dispute of the existing fence, your neighbor wanted to replace it and either you or a previous owner didn't, so they did the next best thing, put up a fence on their side of the property line at a decent enough distance so they could get the privacy they wanted.

Pound the nails out so they’re back on their side. Harmless, but gets the point across(maybe).

While I really dislike painting with a broad brush about any sort of “good ol’ days”…
I think there’s been a huge loss of generalist knowledge since Gen X. Gen X got to grow up with adults familiar with the pre-tech world and where a lot of things could be and needed to be fixed by yourself, and they grew up with the advent of household technology. From mending fences to replacing a capacitor in a electric motor to fixing your own car. Some of that got passed on to the kids by the boomers. I’m not trying to say this kind of knowledge was common, it was just more common. I dunno if millennials got this knowledge dump too, but if you did, you’re on the hook to pass it on as well.
I looked at the fence and couldn’t understand why someone wouldn’t take the ten minutes to trim the bottom off and buy a small box of the correct nails, but then someone could be in the position of never having been taught to think of those things. Maybe it was just laziness.
So, I appeal to my Gen X brethren - peel yourself and your kids away from the screens and find a way to get your collective hands dirty. Change some brake pads. Fix a fence right. Change the spark plug or oil in a mower. Build a raised-bed garden, even a small one, from scratch. Make the kids do the work they can. Trll them why you chose to do what you did, how you chose the parts, what you need to look out for, etc.
It’s better for problem solving skills, planning, and just understanding how things work. Spare everyone the embarrassment of a shitty fence repair job.
- Bro, you can grab any old saw and cut off an end it -takes practically zero knowledge.
  Stop bitching about “kids these days”.
  More likely, the person either didn’t have a saw or was just lazy. This isn’t a generational issue. Don’t be ageist.
  
  This isn’t a “kids these days” at all. No need for you to be offended.
  It was a request to pass on generalist knowledge from generations that had a lot more exposure to it.
  I left plenty of room in my statement with conditional language to allow those with knowledge like this to exist regardless of age, but you went and made it all about you.
- I was raised by a parent who didn't know shit. Didn't know how to maintain a house, didn't know how to cook, barely knew how to do anything. I wished so desperately when I was a teenager and in my early twenties that I could have a mentor of some kind to teach me how to just take care of things in life.
  But that wasn't an option. So now I mostly pay other people.

Unless they also put the fence up backwards, that's taken from inside the fence. So either that's your own fence, or you trespassed to take the photo. Or this story could all be totally fake, who's to say?
- Looks like they each have their own fence. The neighbor has a taller fence. You can see the top of OP's fence near the bottom of the picture.
  People often orient wooden fences so the nice side of it faces inward towards their yard.
  Side note: Sometimes people make their fence with every other slat on the opposite side, so there is no front and back. Both sides are identical. I don't like how those fences look. It just makes both sides look bad, and you can see through them when approaching from an angle.
- I know some places have laws or guidelines that tell you to put the flat pretty side facing out, but every fence I’ve ever seen, including the one I’m looking at out the window of this business I’m at now has the flat side facing the property and the ugly side faces out
  
  I don't want to alarm you but it sounds like someone has been trying to fence you in.