Rude, noisy neighbours

[LaVieEstBelle159]

We've lived here, link detached - our sitting room is attached to their garage for 15 years. Perfectly happily.

They moved in 2 years ago and the noise. Two very noisy children, aged about 10/12 who scream and shout at the top of their lungs. They do nothing to stop them. We have 3 teen DS ourselves, little noise, children on the back and other side, again, little noise. All families just normal family noise.

Then there is the dog, thrown out into the garden and left to bark for hours and hours, teased by the children, barking to be let in.

The front gardens and driveways are open plan so their children play ball games on our front garden. But this results in the balls hitting my car and damaging plants.

Finally after a year of this, (we tried to put up with this during lockdown, summer, accepting neighbours settling in etc) we explained that we understood children needed to play, but please could they do so a little quieter and also could they be a little more conscious about the dog barking. Also that other neighbours had commented to us about it to us. We didn't even mention playing at the front, only the noise.

Since then, they've blanked us completely and taken to slamming the doors in and out of their garage numerous times a day/evening which shakes our sitting room walls! Obviously we won't mention this now.

My AIBU is should we have confronted them in the first place and I'm also asking you to share your neighbourly tales of woe to make me feel better.

DH went and asked our neighbours (retired) if they could keep an eye on the volume of their TV. I was pregnant at the time and their tv was so loud we could watch our tv with the volume off and hear every word, it was stressing me out. DH went off to work for the evening and when her husband came home and I heard him shouting “it’s a good job I wasn’t in I’d have punched him”. He then stomped up and down the stairs, blasted music for hours then at 10pm that night slammed their bedroom door -which was on our party wall-repeatedly so that the wall shook. They never spoke to us again and badmouthed us to the whole street. They had lived their for 40 years.
What the rest of the street didn’t know was the miserable old bugger had bad mouthed each and every one of them to us when we moved in!

Yanbu. I’d log everything they do and take it further if they continue. Or move.

@Frequentlymisunderstood what a miserable old man. Your DH must have been fuming, I bet he wouldn't he wouldn't have shouted that if your DH had been at home! It's the fact these people play the victim that gets me.

@blue I think it might be time for your latter option.

Hey OP. We have a similar issue, living next to a family of screamers so you have my sympathy. If you want to private message for support you are welcome or maybe we could set up a noisy neighbour support thread.

It's been especially hard with lockdowns as you end up stuck in your house having to put up with it. Well done for finally saying something.

Can you enclose your front space with a fence/ wall? Or even a temporary barrier like some big planters. I think you need to say something when you see a ball hit your car that's just not acceptable behaviour.

I've been at my place for ten years and my neighbours have just moved out. I didn't realise how stressed I was with them here and it's now so quiet, it feels as though my ears are ringing all the time with silence.

They had a succession of children quickly and just let them cry at night. The partition between my bedroom and theirs is very thin (you can hear sniffing) so I didn't get any sleep for the first five years, because they had babies crying during the night. It didn't occur to them to take the child out of the bedroom and go somewhere else. I would have to go to work having had two or three hours sleep.

The husband had a chronic cough. He coughed all night, every night for 10 years. They were very aggressive and called their children names and swore at them. The mother was always screeching, never stopped. The husband tried to kick my door in once over something very minor and then they grew a wisteria plant on the outside of the house that was trying to get into my windows and front door. For some reason they slept separately and the husband seemed to have pushed the bed right up to the partitioning wall, it felt like having him in the room with me. The mother starting screaming expletives at me once in the street as I didn't see her as she walked past.

The day they moved out I had to call the police as there was a ruckus with the new neighbours moving in. I thought what fresh hell is this but there hasn't been any noise. I cried about the second day they were gone. It was quiet and it was a decade of released tension. I'm still revelling in the quiet. I had become so used to the constant noise, thudding, screaming, banging that I didn't notice it anymore.

My neighbours are not noisy. However they have had several projects where the workmen invaded my garden and property not only without permission but without notice of any kind! They have been told several times that I would not unreasonably refuse access for their ladders to fix/paint their gutter etc but that they MUST contact me beforehand to arrange access and discuss terms. They have just blanked me and assume they have some kind of right of access because they have lived there since the dark ages.

On the last occasion they turned my garden into a building site until I threatened the workman that I was calling the police. They had an industrial grinder and were grinding concrete lintels on MY side of the fence to make recycled panels fit. No sign of goggles, gloves or "danger" signs as expected from concrete dust. They also began working on a sunday until I again threated them with the police. All documented on my security camera.

They then had the cheek to ask me to contribute to the cost of the "new" fence between the properties. At no time had they approached me first to discuss what style of fence we should have, cost etc. They just went ahead. Knowing that half of the fence panels were recycled and suspecting that the "workmen" were not an official crew I told the neighbour that I would be happy to pay half but I needed copies of itemised receipts showing cost of panels, labour, VAT etc.

In the unlikely event that they are able to produce these documents I will tell them "Thank you for producing the receipts. I see that these come to £XX. That is the very sum I had in mind to charge you for rental of my property when your workmen were accessing my garden without my permission. So we are all straight now."