...to just want some peace and quiet?

[LakieLady]

For nearly 2 years, there have been road works or building works going on on our normally quiet estate.

First it was Virgin Media, digging up the roads until 8 or 9 pm 6 days a week, and until 4 on Sundays. That went on for over 2 months. Then my lovely NDN had an extension built, then next door but 2 had a loft conversion and new driveway done. Across the road have had extensive landscaping done, next door to them had a side extension,
then new gas and water mains were laid, which took 3 months. Then there were several houses extended. A new lot of building works seemed to start as soon as another came to an end.

Next door but 3 have finished their extension and the house on the corner is almost at the point where all the rest of the work is inside and not very noisy. I was looking forward to being able to enjoy a bit of peace and quiet.

Then workmen turned up and started digging up the road at the end of our road. They're doing gas and water mains there now, it'll take 6-8 weeks. Two more houses have or are applying for planning permission for 2 storey extensions.

I'm utterly sick of it. I would just like to be able to sit in my garden or chill at home for a few days without hearing angle grinders, drills, compressors, noisy trucks and noisy workmen.

I'm at the end of my tether. I'd like to say it will be relief to go back to work tomorrow (I do 20 hours a week over 4 days), but work is horrendously busy and stressful as well.

AIBU to be driven to despair by the constant bloody racket?

God no, not at all U; silence is golden, as they say, and increasingly hard to find.

NU at all.

Honestly, I'd be selling up and moving!

God no. That sounds a nightmare. My street is the same at the moment if it makes you feel any better. It's been going on for 2 years. I'm bloody sick of it.
I'm seriously contemplating moving early next year.

glen, we seriously considered moving a year or so ago, but we thought there couldn't possibly be more building/road mending going on! How wrong we were.

We plan to move away from the south east in 3 years anyway, when I get my pension. Moving twice would be a bit crazy, it costs so much in fees and everything it would make quite a dent in the money we'll have to move with. If it's noisy again next weekend, I'll insist we go somewhere in the motorhome, even if we just park up on the downs for a few hours to chill.

And we're going away in 3 weeks, so that will give us a break from it.

If you find a quiet place let me know and I will move there too.

At the moment there are 2 houses being ripped apart, both a similar distance from mine, so 2 lots of builders yelling and the associated noise. One house has actually been totally demolished, normally they have to leave the facade. Every year there is at least one that is knocked into oblivion and all character removed, and it is many years since there was a peaceful morning or day without the burning of builders waste.

Another one has just sold so expect that to be smashed to bits in the near future. The only upside to all this is that people want to buy and live here so hopefully it will be easier to escape this hell hole.

Just to add, all the nice days are filled with the sounds of people yelling at each other in their gardens, and performance parenting at full volume, encouraging babies to scream, and the constant banging of balls on walls. the last place I lived wasn't this noisy, and it was on a corner of 2 busy roads, in 5 years all we had was the gas pipes replaced.