to not want to live in a builders yard

[achipandachair]

I know I am being U really.
My next door neighbour is a builder. What this means is:

• he is always partway through an endless garden project which is about making a huge shed summer house thing, painting everything bright colours, laying patio, etc. It's noisy, there is rubble everywhere, no grass, no plants, and it will literally never be finished
• he doesn't have time to actively work on this all the time, thank goodness, because he has to work as well. That involves starting the engine on his van right outside my bedroom window about 20 minutes before he has to leave and then spending ages sorting out what he needs to bring from the patch of rubble at the front of his house where everyone else has a front garden. It's banging and scraping and shouting all while the engine runs until he can finally get going and then he roars off as if he is going to slay dragons

Everyone has to work, he's not that bad, blah blah blah yeah ok.
But I am totally oversensitised to this because

he smokes weed in the back garden and my kids can't open their windows
he is always trying to chop my trees down because he doesn't like the shade on his patio
he is always bringing crowds of friends to smoke and shout and work on his project
he doesn't just use his outside space. he spreads over the front of my house (not on my property, I mean his vehicles and stuff are always along the front of my house under my windows) and all up the other way to where his garage is in front of several other houses and it makes it feel like the street has become his yard
Given his front garden is now rubble I am afraid he wants to turn into a "parking space" (permanent yard). There is no dropped kerb at the moment and no drive and I am not sure whether he can do this but I think it will make it worse

really a little bit of harmless work noise, especially on the way out somewhere else, is nothing, but I am on high alert because he has history of not respecting boundaries and I am always thinking "what next"

I wish he would work out of a yard which is for work and not work out of residential space where I live.

AIBU?

(I know I am)

You’re not being unreasonable to not like it, but unless he’s encroaching onto your property or making construction noise/doing work outside the permitted times, I don’t see that there’s much to be done.

YANBU OP I live around the corner from someone very like your neighbour and every time I drive past I think how awful it must be to live next door! He’s been working on his drive since we moved in eight years ago! And there are always endless vans parked in front of all the houses along the road, they are branded so I know they’re his. I feel for you.

Oh OP. I am so sorry for you. I had a neighbour like this. Permanent works, skips, vans everywhere. Always shouting and/or using noisy machines. Treating the whole road as part of their building yard.

We moved. Now we have normal neighbours who sometimes make noise but not constantly. It's literally bliss.

Thanks for the sympathy
I would love to move - can't right now for various reasons. But when I moved here, it was lovely and quiet and he moved in after a few years when someone lovely moved out. So the moral of the story is don't paint yourself into a corner and retain your flexibility (easier said than done)