Getting along with your neighbors is important, and sometimes that means letting them walk on your property if they need to.

What would you do if your neighbor actually installed a new driveway halfway onto your property while you were away on vacation?

That is what happened to the homeowner in this story, and he wasn’t happy about it. Read on to see how he got his revenge.

Driveway Revenge

My grandmother lives in a suburb of Chicago very close to the city.

The lots are all 25×125 (with a few exceptions) and pretty densely packed.

Sounds like a nice property.

Her neighbor is the only person on the block (maybe even in the whole town) who has a second lot. Because of the strange configuration of the street, his second lot is 35×125 which gives him a very nice side yard.

My grandmother lives on the east side of this guy, and a Mexican family lives on the west side next to the empty lot.

Grandma got all the juicy details because she and the neighbor moved in on the same day in 1958 and have been close friends ever since.

The garages on this block are directly behind the houses and there’s an alley.

Neighbor built his garage with overhead doors on the front and back of his garage in case he ever decided to put in a side drive across his empty lot. (In 60 years, he never did, btw.)

Enough backstory and buildup…

Neighbor sees Mexican guy chopping a giant hole in the garage.

That will be a nice addition to the garage.

He asks what’s up and Mexican guy says he’s going to install a door just like Neighbor Guy’s.

Neighbor guy wishes him luck and assumes it’s just to open up the garage because they throw an extraordinary amount of back yard parties.

Neighbor Guy goes on a golfing trip for two weeks and takes his wife.

What is he thinking?

He returns to find an asphalt driveway running along Mexican Guy’s house.

It’s cutting onto his empty lot by about 10-12 feet.

He immediately goes to confront Mexican Guy who claims that the edge of the driveway is the property line.

That is fraud.

He pulls out a bad copy of the survey from when he bought the house and it shows that part of the empty lot belongs to Mexican Guy.

Neighbor Guy notices that some of the lines and numbers look funny.

Mexican guy must have modified the survey and copied it a few times to make it look more legit.

Remember, this is the mid 80’s, so Xeroxing several times back then was like photoshop blending now.

This guy has some nerve.

Neighbor guy loses his mind, hunts down his own survey, confronts Mexican Guy again, and Mexican guy basically says, “Yeah, you got me. You don’t even use the empty lot and I don’t like the potholes in the alley.”

Btw, he doctored up the survey because the Driveway Contractors wouldn’t lay the driveway without one.

Neighbor Guy and Mexican Guy go at it for weeks.

Mexican Guy eventually just says “**** you. Deal with it.”

Neighbor Guy is stressed out over this.

He had a heart attack during this time and I have a feeling this driveway was partly to blame.

Well, about a year goes by and they no longer speak to one another.

Mexican Guy assumes he’s in the clear since Neighbor Guy seems to have dropped the issue and they haven’t spoken in many months.

Mexican Guy packs up the family and heads to Mexico for a couple weeks.

Time for revenge.

Neighbor guy decides to act.

Neighbor Guy calls a surveyor to mark the lot.

He discovers that the lot line is less than 2 feet off Mexican Guy’s house.

He always assumed it was 3 feet.

He then calls a fencing company.

He has a fence installed around the empty lot right through the driveway and directly on the lot line.

Mexican Guy comes back and throws a fit.

Well played!

Neighbor guy just says, “**** you. Deal with it.”

In the end, Mexican guy went from a 3 foot walkway to a lavish 12-15 foot driveway and then down to a 20 inch walkway.

What’s even more wonderful about this is that Mexican Guy has his air conditioner and a skinny garden on the other side of the house, so unless he moved an air conditioner and his garden, this tiny walkway next to the empty lot’s fence was his only way of getting from the front to the back without going through the house.

Neighbor Guy eventually had the driveway removed and landscaped the lot.

Although he waited about 5 years.

I assume he waited just so Mexican Guy could see it every day.

He also sued for the cost of removing 100 feet of asphalt and laying sod.

Mexican Guy didn’t pay, so a lien was put on Mexican Guy’s house.

I believe it was for either $8,000 or $12,000.

Mexican Guy eventually moved and Neighbor Guy got paid for the lien out of the sale proceeds, but the fence and skinny walkway still stand to this day.

I can’t believe this guy thought he was going to get away with it.

Take a look at what some of the people in the comments had to say.

Those are small lots.

It was brilliantly planned.

This guy deserved everything he got.

Yeah, what was he thinking?

Some people have a lot of nerve to try to steal the neighbors property.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.