To think this is extremely odd thinking of my chum? Cheeky fucker alert.

[Cheekyarsechum]

My DFriend 5 children have nearly all left home and they're looking to downside by selling and moving to a smaller property.

They want to give their home a good lick of paint and replace the bathrooms, convert an out building to a home office and a secondary outbuilding to a sauna and steam room (they already have a lovely pool) to maximize the value.

DH and I are currently working and sorting out some family admin in our home country for 6 months and have left our 2 DD happily at home (1 at a local university, 1 working casually on a gap year prior to traveling in the summer).

DF's father works in construction and will project manage the work and has recommended 2 excellent young men to do the 8-12 week work on their property. They lodge wherever the work is.

I'm over for a short weekend and met her for coffee yesterday, she's asked if these two lads can lodge at ours (we have 2 spare rooms) while the work is carried out.

I think my face told her how bonkers I thought her request was, but I kinda stuttered and said it wouldn't work for us, and why don't they stay in one of their spare bedrooms? Apparently her older left home DC don't want strangers in their childhood rooms, and she doesn't really want to have to have to engage with strangers in her own home.

AIBU to this a most ludicrous unthought-through request?

What are her adult children going to do when the house is sold and their childhood bedrooms are gone.

Your friend needs to either let the lads stay at hers or pay for digs.

So she doesn't want the hassle but she thinks you would?!

Naaaah. Feck that.

Your friend is an unbelievably CF for asking you!

Also I think they are foolish to be doing all this home office, steam room/sauna crap. It will potentially make their home harder to sell rather than add value But that’s a whole other issue.

So her and her children don’t want strangers in their home and bedrooms yet she thinks you will?!

It’s an absolute insane ask and even more so with your two daughters living in the home alone during that period.

I was going to say much the same. The “harm in asking” is that you potentially put someone in a position of doing something that they don’t want to do because they don’t want/feel unable to say no to you. There’s a thread on here every week along these lines! Some people aren’t assertive and they are people pleasers and they find it hard to say “no”, even to a pretty brazen request. I am a bit of a cynic; I think a lot of cheeky people deliberately target people on this basis as they think they won’t say “no”. So I think your neighbour was unreasonable - why they hell would you want something in your house that they don’t want in theirs? Fair enough to ask in general terms - “do you think there might be anyone in the village who would like some lodgers for extra cash?”. But they’ve put you in a position of having to say “no” and potentially feel like you’re being “difficult”.

@HappySheldon but I'm guessing you had to get really angry before you took this measure? And probably months of frustration before you reached that point. People who take advantage of people pleasers are the real problem because they know the other person is a people pleaser. This is why they ask, they don't ask others. In many ways its such a lovely generous quality to have and eventually over time it gets overturned because people take the piss. It's a shame really.

Yep. Really really angry is the word. I spent years talking about it on Mn actually and received great advice which mostly rattled around in my brain for a further few years. But it took the last straw and then me having a major foot stomping shit fit.

Life's loads better now tbh.

It's also why I am drawn to threads where people are people pleasers and I don't want them to go through what I did!

People pleasers IME (IRL and on MN) tend to be gentle people who want to make life better for others. Maybe with a hefty dollop of self esteem issues (which is it for me- worried people won't like me or want to be my friend unless I was their doormat). The takers of this world have the sixth sense of a cocaine sniffing police dog and they can rootle out people like us in seconds. I am getting better at boundaries and just hope that I can pass on my thoughts which might help- even if it takes years like it did for me!

She was unreasonable to ask, doesn’t want them in her house but happily have them in yours !

This.

The bathrooms are worth doing, the rest is not.

I don't think it's ok to ask this of you at all OP and I'd consider anybody who thought it was reasonable to ask to compromise my 2 DD's not really a friend. I don't buy into drama but I'd be questioning the values of this person and their opinion of me tbh

Because OPs two daughters ARE living in the property....

Because her daughters are there?!

I think it's fucking rude to even ask personally.

This

Of course it's cheeky! Her adult children have moved out but still think they can gatekeep their old room's so her solution is to have these two 'strangers' live with OP's daughters!

They are self employed subcontractors registered with HMRC under the CIS scheme, my brother has a commercial tiling company and there’s a shortage of good contractors, we have used many overseas contractors. They are very well paid.