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[quote=Anonymous]We recently purchased a home that has needed an incredible amount of renovations, and we have quite a few more on the list. Trying to separate "wants" vs. "needs" right now as we are wrapping up the initial work for which we had budgeted.

We have a huge backyard that is sort of rectangular shaped. One of the long rectangle sides runs up against a busy-ish road, with a row of trees that were planted right around when the house was built in 1969.

Here is our problem: because of the busy road, I feel like our backyard is basically unusable until we get a fence up. Our only child will be 4 in the spring, which I feel is not old enough to be in a yard adjacent to a busy road without a fence.. even with supervision. We are on .5 acre, so there is a lot of space, and I feel that even if she is supervised closely, she could be far enough away that running into the street is not out of the realm of possibility if a ball or something goes in the street. (My husband disagrees, btw). But even if you make the argument about close supervision, I am definitely not ok with her little friends running around back there, parents there or not. I think it would be a recipe for a lawsuit if anything happens.

However, if we put a fence up, the branches on the trees are so tall and so heavy, that the fence will be damaged by falling branches over time. I am not exactly sure how long this will take, but the trees are huge and branches seem to fall regularly, so I think this is a real concern. The "right" thing to do would be to get rid of all the trees before putting up a fence, but at the cost of $1k/tree, that is not realistic. We can't throw $25k on the backyard right now for tree removal and a fence because we have bigger priorities inside the home that we need to deal with first.

Here is what I am trying to figure out. Do we:

-Leave the trees where they are, put up a low end fence - which is still probably going to cost 8k ish I think - and then just fix the damage as it occurs and deal with the trees in a few years, at which point we may need to replace the fence?

-Not use the backyard for a few years (this seems so sad!) and take care of the whole thing when we can afford it, digging up the trees and putting in the fence at that point.

-Allow our child and other children to play in the backyard while supervised for now, and then take care of the whole thing when we can afford it

Has anyone else dealt with a similar problem? Is there another option that we are not considering?

I really want there to be some solution that would allow us to use the backyard while not spending 25k to do so..[/quote]

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