New neighbours!!

[The3Bears]

We had an elderly lady living next door to us for the last 6 years, sadly she passed away in May this year, her son in law owned the house and emptied it straight away and began renovating it for his daughter to live in.
He's been banging/drilling non stop for the past 4 months everyday without fail but has always stopped by 7pm, we have 2 young children in our house so this was fine and we just put up with it.
However this week has been a nightmare, his daughter is obviously moving in this week and has been here non stop moving things in but on Monday she decided 10.30pm! was an appropriate time to come and start decorating!! this woke my 2 children up til 1.30am when they left as they were banging on the wall which is between my children's bedroom.
Then tonight at 8.15pm a united carpets van pulls up and fits carpets in what I can assume 3 rooms as I could hear constant banging in every room in our house til 10pm!!
I am fuming dh is at work and I'm home alone with the children, it took me 2 hours to get my 2 year old asleep and my 7 year old is still awake as he can't sleep because there still banging now!
Ive took the reg number on the united carpets van and am going to ring the company tomorrow to complain, dh is going to go round tomorrow and have a word with our lovely new neighbours!!
aibu to complain to both the neighbours and the carpet company as surely fitting a carpet at 8-10pm is not allowed??

As someone who moved in on the monday and had neighbours complaining at us on the saturday morning for being to noisy during the day when the nightshift worker sleeps (we were putting beds together and building various furniture) PLEASE wait a while before even politely mentioning anything.

I now have a dislike for my neighbours and will probably never like them. First impressions are a big deal and they have shown that they obviously have zero tolerance or patience for anyone or anything. Last night could hear music at 1am, and i sooooooo wanted to send DH down just to give them a taste of their own medicine but thankfully i'm a bigger person than that. I'll never like them though which is quite sad as its nice to be friendly with neighbours.

My X would start work at 9 or later,as he didn't finish work til 7 and wasn't home til 8. Many people in trades are the same.

I know drivers for courier cos who work til 10/11. They often use their vans to help out family/friends with moving furniture etc but can't til they finish work, quite possibly it's something like this which is why they were moving things in at midnight.

I don't see the point in getting upset about something you can't change when you're about to move anyway, it's only going to be an issue for a finite length of time.

We have the opposite problem in a way as our neighbours are unemployed so have all day every day to do whatever they like. Which means they don't understand that everyone else on the street (who work) only have limited time in the evenings to cut the lawn, saw fire-wood, whatever... The woman's head appeared like a gargoyle over my fence to whine we were waking her toddler up by power-washing the caravan.... at 7pm, one evening this summer. After 9pm, fair enough but 7 was reasonable when everyone else was still out in the garden, also catching up on the stuff we don't have the luxury of doing during the daytime...

Council community officer just laughed when I told her, and said that we could do whatever we liked in our garden til around 9pm - perfectly reasonable noises of everyday living.

There is a definite divide though - as they can do all this stuff say, mid-day, they simply don't get it that the rest of us have to do it when we can.

YANBU!!
They are inconsiderate swines, go get them told!

Who cares if you finish work at 9 or 10pm?! I did late shifts for years and I wouldn't have come home at ten at night and started to do DIY! It's so inconsiderate.

If you work those hours (which are horrible), then you just have to take time off work to get it done, like everyone else who needs stuff done during their working day has to do

As for having relatives who can help, you co-ordinate a time and do it at the weekend or at least by 7/8pm, if not, you do what other people do and hire a man with a van to do it for you. Part of working anti-social hours is accepting you can't come home late at night and get on with your housework and DIY!

Some people on this thread are unbelievably selfish.

Definitely YANBU.

Yanbu

Banging on walls at night and moving furniture in the middle of the night is not acceptable in any way, at all, ever.

Is it not possible that the carpet fitters were delayed due to traffic problems or something? Can't imagine they start fitting at 7pm ordinarily. Quite impressed they finished their allocated work if that is the case.
DIY at 1am etc., not so great.
My theory is that carpets were late so moving in was late, and there were people moving into their house.
Could have got the carpets fitted sooner perhaps.

I would be fuming and I wouldn't have waited as politely as you have.
I would certainly go right over and knock on the door explaining that they have woken you or the kids.
I would also suggest to them the hours that you see as reasonable to do DIY.
It's inconsiderate and unacceptable.
Failing that - when you move out I would be sure to do it at similar times - assuming they will be moved in at that stage

Lots of people work til 7-8pm, doing diy after that is the only time it can possibly get done. I suppose unless you work those hours it can be difficult to understand it. There have been plenty of occasions when we've had to do works in late evening as my XP didn't get home til 8 and worked weekends. Plus we found it easier to do work when our DC were in bed. We were never too precious about making them sleep in silence, dark etc so noise didn't disturb them.

And stuff your neighbours.

I cannot believe how selfish and 'me, me, me' people are becoming. It is not your neighbour's problem that you work late or at weekends. It is thoughtless and inconsiderate and you may find your local council does not agree with your attitude.

Save up the work and do it in holidays.

Not sure if you've spoken to the carpet shop but my cousin is a carpet fitter and at this time of year they do start to work later and later because they have a lot of orders coming in who want the carpets to be done by Christmas.

Not sure about United Carpets, but I think most fitters aren't directly employed by the shops, just contracted to them, so UC might not decide (or care) what time the fitters come, as long as the job gets done on the day they've said it would.

I'd imagine though that if the carpet fitting were a one off and you hadn't already had several months of building work and then several nights of noisy DIY, you would have been more inclined to tolerate the carpets being fitted as it's not going to be a regular thing.

Your local council will have probably have guidelines about DIY/building work noise on it's website if you want to look.

Banging on the walls until 1:30am is not acceptable for any reason, regardless of whether your neighbours have children or not.

Did you manage to get any sleep OP?

I'd say your new neighbours just didn't think that the banging and hammering and DIY-ing travelled through the walls so much so they were happy to keep doing it for as long as they could. Did the noise ease up after your DH had a word with them?

We are in the process of getting our new place habitable to live in whilst juggling working and childcare, meaning a lot of stuff is having to be done in the evening.

My OH is currently doing 6pm-Midnight in our new place most nights [top floor maisonette]

He works in the rooms directly above neighbours place in earlier part of evening and then goes up to the other floors after say 9pm.

It helps that neighbours bedrooms are underneath the living room and kitchen so we know we're not disturbing her or her (teenage) kids sleep but we still try to be discreet and OH has said to neighbour whenever he has seen her to knock up if he is making too much noise.

However that said we do need to move house - we are paying out for two properties at the moment and just working evenings / weekends is making the process a lot slower. This is despite having help as well (we have had a few people spare the odd day here and there - OH is a decorator so they have been friends in the trade - plus we have family in at the weekends too)

I think consideration needs to work both ways.

Carpet being laid at night is most unusual though!!!

I think I would phone the carpet company and do a general complaint about them fitting carpets in an adjoining property late at night. I am surprised they even do this as laying carpets is really noisy. In terms of the decorating etc it may be best to introduce yourself and talk in general and come to an agreement about making noise late into the evening as you both have young children.

Just have a polite word with your neighbours?

I had neighbours like this, hoovering at midnight, her dh outside my bedroom window breaking up concrete at all hours for their drive. Also cutting their grass at stupid hours. Having a word with them made no difference, totally self absorbed and selfish.
I nearly had breakdown, noisy neighbours are no laughing matter.

You can make a noise complaint via Environmental Health. It's a greyer area re: building work if it's DIY, rather than contractors, but it is still possible to enlist the Council's help with a noise nuisance. They have fewer sanctions with owner occupiers than with a tenant in public housing.

I think its really inconsiderate. We moved into new place and I was really conscious that we finished by 7pm. We started by about 8 am one morning and we went round the day before to warn them and apologise if they were disturbed. I get that it's not always possible, but she shouldn't be decorating at 10 pm and she should definitely have come round to see you about it. I bet she wouldn't have done this if her kids were there and trying to sleep. She sounds very thoughtless.

Sorry for the late reply been very busy and haven't had chance to come on to mumsnet

As I said earlier my DH did say about the noise to them and they did apologise and said they didn't realise Its calmed down a lot now and I have said hello to the new neighbour so things are a lot better now and my dc can sleep again (hooray)
I know a couple of people on the street have complained about the moving in at 1am to new neighbour and also about parking so Im glad I remained calm and didn't go round ranting as it can't be nice to move onto a street where everyone already dislikes you, hopefully now they'll be more considerate to their new neighbours and continue to stick to diy at reasonable times.