Building works

[FionasFineFone]

If you are doing lengthy, noisy and messy building works, would you inform your neighbours in advance to let them know about the building work to manage their expectations or would you not?

YABU - No. I don't have to tell my neighbours what I am doing in my own home. It's my business.

YANBU - Yes. I would let my neighbours know that we are planning to do building works and apologise in advance for any inconvenience.

Prior to our refurb we did just this - kept neighbours informed etc and we sorely regretted it. Most were lovely but one in particular was horrendous - our builders were harassed on an almost daily occurrence by them and, on occasion, their nanny.

Telling them in advance led them to believe that they had a right to dictate when and how our builders did work. One of their first emails to us asked us to postpone the start date of our build and told us that we would have to agree to quiet periods of work over lunch time. When we side stepped this they tried to sneak a clause to the effect of the latter into the party wall award.

Horrid people.

Depends, so they need planning, so you need a party wall award?

Thank you for sharing your experience. Those neighbours do sound difficult and went too far. What if you had really nice neighbours who have never said a thing during your previous nearly year long building works? Would you just let you building works impose on them and their lives for several months without ever speaking to them about it? I can't imagine doing this. When we had our work done, we kept NDN in the loop, apologised in advance for any inconvenience and told them to let us know if they ever had any issues.

Yes i always would, pop a note through the door, because it's just the decent thing to do. You don't know (unless you talk to them and are close) what is going on in their life at the time. If they are studying? Working from home, maybe taken a week off thinking they will just potter about at home.

At the very least if they know they can make alternative arrangements to avoid the noise if they can.

We’ve had works going on for ages, and the only thing that my neighbours have asked is could they parkin our space and we park in theirs til the work is done. The communal door is nearer their space, although at weekends can they have their space back as parking their Range Rover on a space the size of ours is a problem.

im blessed - our neighbours love nice things and love we look after our flat

Yes, I’d let them know. I let them know about minor stuff where there might be a bit of noise, so I’d definitely tell them about anything major.

Honestly, with one side yes because they are lovely. With the otherside absolutely not.

They have been vile since the day I bought my house. They have complained that my dog was barking and out on the front yard at 2am. This was utter bs because 1) my front yard is not secure and she is never put out there and 2) we were away and the dog was several miles away with my exdp.

They have loud noisy work done, screaming rows and loud parties til 3-4am and then have the berve to moan if they hear us do anything in the house.

So I would absolutely not tell them. They can put up and shut up quite frankly.

Yes I let my immediate neighbours both sides know but also made sure my builders kept noise down, no loud radios playing, and the pavements etc as clear as possible