Neighbours hate us because of extension.

[SummerHathCommeth]

We’ve lived in our house for 5 years. We have two sets of neighbours on one side who we get on very with well. The ones on the other side not so much. They moved to their house 6 years ago are recently retired with DC who have left home. We have 4 children and need to extend as desperately more space.

We spoke to them telling them our plans before we applied for permission and were surprised when they put in a very long objection stating it would affect light to one of their side windows at certain times of the day in winter and that we could see into their property from our skylights.

We got permission and have begun building but the tension is palpable, it’s sucked all the joy out of it. They have stopped speaking to us and are actually quite hostile shaking their heads every time they see us and the woman confronted DH telling him how underhand we’ve been. They have never been particularly friendly to us or any of the other families but this is making life very stressful.

Their (extended) house is 15 meters away from ours with two gardens, two hedges and a road in between and also at a much lower elevation. Our skylights will be 9 foot above floor level so we couldn’t see out of them even if we wanted to.

Are we being unreasonable?

@MistyMargaret

I honestly think people who have noisy and not strictly necessary building work done during the pandemic are slightly unreasonable. With people working from home and essentially trapped with someone else's noise it can be hell on earth. If you need to get a leaking roof mended or similar, that's a different matter. It's necessary. But with the best will in the world, your extension could wait, couldn't it? (Yes I have been shielding, stuck at home, and my neighbours are noisy cunts who build for fun.)

There's no good time for disruptive building work to be done. Nobody likes at any time. Once the pandemic is over people will just find some other reason that it's annoying

What was their view before you built the extension?

You have permission, end of story, ignore the nonsense. Once your project is complete hopefully things will settled down, perhaps they don’t like disruption. Don’t engage.

My neighbours did a loft conversion and I didn’t object but since it was completed they and their children are often staring out of the skylight into our garden. We have no privacy now and I hate it.

I also think it's quite unlikely @MistyMargaret that your neighbours are paying for building work (which lets face isn't cheap) just for the fun of pissing you off

@Ilovelove

You got permission. Right now grey rock. In a few years send them a Christmas card if you want to try and mend fences so to speak.

Ultimately this is their problem.

Tell them they are welcome to the massive extension-warming party you'll be having!

They need to get net curtains and calm down.

Some people are really controlling about what their neighbours do!

Part of living where there are neighbors is putting up with occasional building/extensions. People need more room, they build. You got proper planning approval. Your neighbors are being idiots. Ignore them.

No sympathy for anyone who moans when they have a large house with an extension of their home and a large wrap around garden. They're being ridiculous and they know it.

YANBU, not at all. I don’t think anyone looks forward to their neighbours building an extension, because it does create dust, noise etc. As lovely as my neighbours are, theirs did cause some problems (mostly due to vehicles blocking my drive and taking ages to move when I was trying to get out/in). Just keep an eye on your contractors to make sure they aren’t acting unreasonably, because some really do. The work won’t go on forever, if they choose to waste their energy holding a grudge once the dust has (literally) settled - more fool them.

Ha I'm wondering if you live near me! Our neighbours got very snippy about our extension, even though they already had one that was bigger than what we were planning! But they waited 4 years from when they moved in to do it, so that was ok apparently!

YANBU though!

Surely building an extension increases the value of your house, and therefore increases the average value of houses in your road, and therefore increases the value of their property?

To be fair OP given that you’ve got 4 children and building work going on that’s probably sucked some of the joy out of it too (temporarily) they’re bonkers and once it’s all done and you have more space you will enjoy it and you can teach the children to wave enthusiastically and smile. Maybe a massive trampoline so they can jump above the foliage and wave directly through that special window. People are miserable. There’s enough to be down about and you can practice not caring about silly people on them.

15 metres and theirs is extended?!?!

Next time the bitch shakes her head, you could tell her to grow up.

@Kissthepastrychef

I also think it's quite unlikely *@MistyMargaret* that your neighbours are paying for building work (which lets face isn't cheap) just for the fun of pissing you off

They are not paying for building work. They are doing pointless, noisy, ugly building work on a DIY basis, including building a massive garden shed, replacing their garage, erecting some ugly structure for their cats, digging up a perfectly fine patio, etc. all by themselves. About a foot from my fence which is about another foot from my house. They are newly retired, fit, and bored. Dicking about with noisy tools in their garden seems to be their greatest pleasure.

I'm sure they are not doing to just to annoy me, but annoying me it is.

I disagree with all of those claiming there is no difference in doing noisy work during an unprecedented global crisis when people have been literally unable to leave their house than at any other time.

My neighbours were hostile to our building work. Ours was a one storey extension, which stuck out slightly more than theirs due to the front of our house being further back than theirs. They had a 2 storey extension 20 years prior on the back of their house. Bet they didn’t think how it would affect the previous owners. We could have gone out a bit further. Wish we did now. But didn’t want to upset them. Should have known she would have been upset whatever. Jealous. She even told me she didn’t want us to do it because they didn’t want to spend more money on their house.

Ignore ignore ignore. Sadly there are many people like your batshit neighbours. Take the high road - always smile, acknowledge them and walk on any time you see them. They will hate it especially if there is anyone else in the vicinity.
- I know how difficult it is.

They don't like the idea of it and are being mardy about it, but so what? You have been through the planning permission process and your plans were approved, so YABU
They will get used to the extension.
But in the meantime you will still be living next door so the best thing is to smile and wave like the Penguins of Madagascar as you walk on by and ignore everything else and hopefully once they get used to it, whilst they still might not like it, it will eventually be less and less of an issue. Especially if it doesnt really impact on them as much as they thought it would.
It would be prudent to make sure your Builder is aware of the situation and doesn't do anything to further annoy them, like parking across their drive etc. (which ours did!)
Can you put more Trellis on the top of your fence or Plant a tree to screen it from them a bit more? on the grounds of out of sight out of mind?

Sorry. I meant to say YANBU... what can I say.. typing on a phone.

@Warpedfrailty

My neighbours did this and I hate them for it. Even on a sunny day I have to put the light on in the kitchen to see as their extension blocks the light. They think they did nothing wrong. I think they should have moved if they wanted more space.

Have you thought of a sun tunnel? I had one put in my BTL bungalow as it has an internal bathroom which was very dark all the time. The difference it made was unbelievable. I got mine from solarspot.co.uk/ It cost £800 in 2019.

From the other side of the fence, our neighbour came to us with a bunch of plans. She wanted to build a 10ft high extension that would block most of the sun from our only south-facing window, look into another window and wanted to encourage us to write a letter of support.

We couldn't agree to it as it wouldn't have been at all in our best interest. Turns out she applied for PP with the previous owners of our house, but it was rejected for being 'unneighbourly'.

We told her we totally understood if she wanted to apply and no hard feelings if it got approved, but we would have to object. She was frosty for a while but we're fine now.

YANBU. Your neighbours are being childish and spiteful to behave this way. If council approve it then you can do what you like on your land.

It’s wrong of them to be openly hostile, but you can’t expect neighbours to be happy about extensions. The outside of a house is never attractive, and that’s even after all the hassle of having builders. My neighbours built an extension. All legal of course. It doesn’t block my light much as the sun is on the other side, but it is absolutely hideous. It’s like a grey concrete box stuck on to the back of a red brick house. It has a flat roof so it doesn’t slope into the house. It’s twice the height of my fence, so when I’m in the garden I can see this enormous grey wall where there used to be sky and trees , and it makes me angry every time I look at it. They know I hate it because I told the builders, but we’ve remained civil, years later.

They love it, it gave them extra room, and they got planning permission, so like you OP, they’re technically in the right. But that doesn’t stop it looking like crap from my side.

I think it is a bit unreasonable to expect your neighbours to be happy about noisy building work all summer which will likely ruin any peace and mean they can't sit out, it's not going to be of benefit to them in any way

The dirt, noise, spoilt summer days, bad language, builder trucks coming and going... you’ve shown them no consideration at all. Plus they get to look at a hideous brick wall instead of blue sky....

If you wanted more space you should’ve brought a bigger house.

@AnneElliott

Ignore them. We had similar with our neighbours in our old house. They'd had an extension and loft conversion but hated the idea of us having one. I think it was partly jealousy - they resented the fact we were younger and had the funds to extend the house.

Our neighbours had (foolishly) put windows on their extension that was up against our boundary and were annoyed that they would be able to see our brick extension. Unfortunately for them I called the planners to discuss this which unearthed the fact that they didn't have planning permission for their extension in the first place! And they'd threatened to call the council on us! We had planning and building regs sorted.

The woman also asked the builder if he could change the design of the flat roof as she felt it would mean more rainwater onto her roof and guttering. It wouldn't and DH produced the drawing to calculate it (he's an engineer and designed the loft) but apparently she was still the expert as being a legal Secretary qualifies you in everything

We eventually moved and I do hope the new owners don't have the same issues as we did!!

What happened with the extension that they did not have planning permission for?

The OP lives on the other side of the street to the whining neighbours so she's not going to be blocking out their light nor will they be staring at a brick wall.

She's even provided a helpful diagram.

And we're not in lockdown any more but that's a moot point as the whiny neighbours are retired. As it says in the OP.