Building work like a drill to the head all day every day

[MuminMama]

I guess this is a mixture of letting off steam and asking for practical advice. I have a home office so I'm always here. Next door are doing a loft conversion and an extension, scheduled to take four months. Right now I feel like I can't cope with this noise for four months, or even another four minutes. The whole room is shaking. The neighbours have moved out for the duration. I would go and stay with family but the kids have to be at school. I'd love to think that perhaps the noisy work gets less as the time goes on, ha ha, am I dreaming? Anyone found any great ways to cope with the distraction and, well, the anger?

Firstly - the bad news it will probably take 6 months, and the neighbours will have probably taken a 6 month tenancy somewhere as a contingency - this happened to us.

We had to go out - and eventually we brought our plans to buy ahead, we luckerly moved out on month 3 and that was enough. They had builders trying to work through the night when they should have been finished at 7pm at the latest.

Our neighbours were really good friends - so we had quite a lot of influence on how it was handled. We now have a detached with a plot around it - as I couldn't take that kind of building work again.

So - places to head out too, coffee shops, libraries, some parks have WiFi if weather is nice, maybe as an extreme rent an office / room / desk short term.

Which bit are they doing now? I worked at home 2 days a week through our own loft conversion and apart from a couple of days it wasn't noisy at all?

I'd go out and work from the library if you can. It will be heavy going for months. Not much you can do really other than try to not be there as much.

Can you talk to the neighbours and their builders and ask if they can keep you in the loop re when the worst bits are planned? It's awful!
Maybe you can work in their rented haven...

Thanks for all your answers. It's kind of just nice to know other people have been through it. I really hadn't considered finding somewhere else to work. I may pursue that.

I'm not sure what they are doing right now but it is literally making the house shake. I guess they are destroying the current structure of the top of the house.

The neighbours did say they are house sitting for three months and then are homeless; the builders also have to pay them £750 a day each day they go over. So fingers crossed it will all be done on time, at least!

I so so sympathise. A new neighbour is having all sorts done to his terraced cottage. I can actually tolerate the building noises. For me it was the bloody radio on outside from 7am to 5pm all day and crap music blaring out. I got the main culprit on his own and explained that it was doing my head in, it stopped immediately and life is so much more tolerable

That's good. I'm glad you spoke up. It's worth sorting out the annoying stuff they don't actually need to be doing, I guess. Today my house is full of clouds of smoke and the smell of burning, but I'm assuming that is a core activity. Grrrrrr.