New lodger taking over my house!!!

[scrabbled]

Ahhh not sure if I'm being unreasonable as my last lodger kept himself very to himself and I know I was lucky.

New lodger moved in Saturday, but I was away.

He is taking over my house!!

• has installed a doorbell with alarms all over the house without asking me
• keeps his bedroom door open whilst blaring out rubbish heavy metal music
• has filled all available work spaces with protein and supplements and squeezed my stuff onto a tiny shelf
• stays up until the early hours watching tv in he living room and refusing to turn it down.
• kept his keys in the door so that when I got home from work I was locked out, as he was in the shower.

I've just been sitting quietly eating dinner and he has come in and turned on the TV and started watching something.

AIBU here? And if I'm not how do I tell him where the boundaries are?

Genuinely would have a conversation asap that the alarms are coming off, and the workspace cant be dominated.

If he pushes back "i dont think this is working out, this is your notice to leave" amd if he doesn't the rest of the two weeks is a trial to see if he shapes up.

Until you communicate assertively and clearly he'll continue to treat you like a mug.

Scrabbled don't worry about it...people just want OP's on here to SAY they're going to do as suggested. Nobody thinks you'd do it tonight.

Wow I think he is definitely confusing this with a house share. You two need to talk. If not tonight then tomorrow.

Pp who are criticising OP for not acting quickly would you accept that having gone to some trouble to find the right person, get a room ready etc it might take a bit of agonising to think 'no, I made a mistake, this one has to go'.

If someone's in your home you don't want to have a really horrible week or fortnight before they leave and this guy's locked her out before. It's not so unreasonable for the OP to get her head around this. Well that's my projection anyway

No offence intended

How hard do you have to think about “this isn’t working for me, please find somewhere else to live”?

Haha cross post with op

Neome It's more that she didn't acknowledge all the posts telling her to ask him to leave.

If she'd said something like "Right, will do it tomorrow when I'm back from work" people would be happy. The internet is weird...people use these threads for some sort of gratification and when an OP doesn't respond "correctly" they feel cheated.

I also thought he doesnt understand the difference between house share and lodging when I read this.

He thinks he has equal rights to space, hence the resistance to requests and animosity and the damn door bells, presumably for all his Amazon crap that will start arriving soon!

You need to make that clear now, then decide whether it may work.

He’s not going to improve, you need to tell him it’s not working for you.

would you make the evening this awkward for yourself when you could just sleep on it, think about how to work it and then tell him tomorrow? Remember I have to live with the guy in the short term.

Yes. You have to give him a weeks notice. It's going to be awkward anyway. Telling him tonight means there's a fighting chance he'll be gone at the weekend.

I never post these but I think your post and your subsequent replies (or lack of them) deserve it...

But you have presumably asked other lodgers to leave, what’s different about this time?

Thank you Henny I see what you mean. Sort of thread housekeeping.

DH and I rented out a spare room out years ago, in our first house, to help pay the mortgage while I did a degree. We had no end of problems. I think this is partly because a lot of people fundamentally misunderstand the difference between a house-share and renting a room from live-in landlords. Our first lodger just assumed that the lounge (and anything in it!) was communal and we assumed they would understand it wasn't. Our fault, obviously, we should have spelled it out but we were inexperienced as landlords. We learned very quickly that you really have to spell out ground rules from the get go. But even with future lodgers, when we were very clear about the boundaries and expectations, they still took the piss in one way or another. The bottom line is, you care about the house because it's yours, they don't care because it's just a temporary stop gap for them.

I would ask him to leave (at a sensible time tomorrow) and follow up with a letter under his door asking him to put right the damage caused to your property by installing the doorbell

Get him gone

Just imagine how much worse he can get if this is the first impression he's happy to give out.

I genuinely am not sure if I'm being precious about my house.

Really? Even after all these unanimous posts telling you to get rid?

I'd be seriously considering changing the locks and putting his stuff out on the pavement on bin day

Tell him tonight. Give him a week's notice but tell him tonight. He's likely to try and talk you out of it. Also tell him the TV mustn't go above X level and be turned off by Y time, the doorbell removed and any holes made good, or that week will become two days.

I can't see a picture of your kitchen OP

Dear Motoko (I realise I'm projecting like mad) if you're living with someone who's behaving as if their trampling over your boundaries is completely reasonable and normal it can make you wonder if you're being unreasonable. Just a little bit like the effect of deliberate gaslighting even if it's just a clash of living styles and not deliberate at all.

No idea why this thread is hitting such a nerve with me

Hope you're ok OP

I think you are doing the right thing to sleep on it OP. Not everyone has the confidence to give ultimatums but you will no doubt tell him in your own way if you think it is the right thing to do.

You came here looking for opinions about whether you are being precious about the use of your house - everyone agrees you are not. Your lodger is overstepping the mark by a mile (putting up door bells!!) and most people would not put up with it.

No your not being precious about your house. Yes he is overstepping the mark - but interesting when you said no the second time to his mirror idea that he removed shakes from the kitchen, that he had previously refused to remove.

He isn’t used to living in an owners landlird house. In shared houses he has got away with doing as he pleases, now he lives with the owner and it hasn’t dawned on him that you make the rules...and if he doesn’t like them - well there’s the door

I’d tell him that if he doesn’t like your rules he’s welcome to leave. He needs to get his shakes out of the kitchen, turn the tv down or get headphones in his room and stay in his room like agreed. The choice is his but a refusal is not acceptable

I've been renting my spare room for about 2 years so not new to it, previously people have said I've been precious and probably sometimes I have in hindsight which is why I'm not sure this time.