Extensive renovations - neighbourly relations

[BettyBathroom]

Just curious how many people's relationships with their neighbours had been negatively affected by renovations to their property.

Our renovation took 6 months and initially neighbour was fine but she got progressively more and more pissed off and while I did all I could to try and keep things sweet, the builders tried to be as accomdating as possible but occasionally delivery vans parked in front of her driveway and she was less than understanding. The evil glares started to appear after 2 months. Things are very cool between us now.

So now she has started to do some work on her property and all the things that she complained bitterly to me about - her builders are now doing and we have vans parked half way across our driveway. I suppose I could go over and complain but I fear that would be the last nail in the coffin and things would become less than civilised - I want to stay in this house so don't want a permanent falling out but I am a tad pissed off but only because she was so intolerant of our building works and we have in the past been completely tolerant of major works she had done before she moved in.

Speaking to other people who've had similar amounts of work done, quite a few of them suggest that they no longer speak to their neighbour and I just wondered how common it was.

Our neighbours threatened legal action and we haven't even started yet! Loons. Good luck.

Oh the joys. Ours are not happy either side but we are almost done on a 3-4 month project. They will be glad when it stops. Tis only phase one though ...not sure how the break that too them

We did 3 months of complete internal renovations (of the knocking down walls kind) 16 months ago.

Our neighbours were very lovely. The people on the non-attached side of us (we live in a semi, and next to us on the non-attached side is a detached) offered their driveway to the builders for parking and frequently came out to see how things were progressing. They are a lovely retired couple.
The people attached to us were also very very tolerant especially considering how paperthin the dividing wall is. They both work and have young children so we did have two friendly 'complaints' from them reminding us that they need a bit of peace and quiet but all in all it was fine. They even invited us for dinner after we had not had a kitched for 3 weeks and were desperate for a home cooked meal. They also offered us the use of their bathroom whilst ours was being refitted but we did not take them up on that offer.

Our building works finished two weeks befor Christmas 2010 so we bought both sets of neighbours an expensive bottle of wine and a nice box of chocolates and delivered these along with a note thanking them for being so understanding during our building works.

I think we are very lucky with our neighbours.

Things have become more strained with us, despite our builders being as accomodating as possible too.

I pretend I don't notice and continue to be cheery to them - we never really had more than a quick 'hello-hows-it-going' type relationship anyway.

We had a crisis meeting with them during our latest phase as things got a bit tense. I showed them what we were doing and pointed out where the really noisy messy bits would be. It probably helped a bit, but other neighbours (who have been great) think they are just jealous.

Still lots more to do, I suspect we will not be speaking by the end...

We have done our house up from the floor boards to the ceilings, added a large extension, conservatory, loft conversion, DH build a huge garage at the bottom of the garden...looks like a small bungalow.
Plastered, knocked off plaster, knocked down walls, new kitchen/bathroom/internal fire doors...its a whole new building..

Neighbours....curious so we went round before doing anything and told them what we were doing, explained about planning permission etc and asked if they had any questions or anything that they wanted to air..they did not.
BUT
when we started, the lady (elderly woman) was constantly out, telling the builders off, questioning them and us, telling all of us that we were doing things wrong, interfering, suggesting other ways to do things (the right way apparently)

This, i have found, is just her nature, she has a gardner who she follows round telling him off, suggesting better ways of doing things and being a PITA really.
We are used to her now, i avoid her because i cant stand the constant intrusive questioning and opinionated comments. We do still speak and she has our number if she needs us for anything.
I took her a peace lilly round when we had completed the works as i did feel that she had gone through it all with us.
I showed her around the house when it was complete...but the comments came about how she wouldnt have her room laid out like that etc.

For the sake of good relations, i did smile very sweetly always and bit almost through my tongue on many occasions.

Good luck, they are a challenge, but then they probably see you as a challenge too unfortunately

I have renovated about 11 houses and tbh the neighbours and keeping them sweet is the worst bit!

Our neighbours wrote a letter of complaint to the builders and copied us into the letter

Our builder went straight across the road and started arguing with our neighbour in the middle of the road. I went inside and hid!

I can laugh about it now.

I know its awful! One neighbour said to me why did you buy a house that needed so much work!. When it really kicks off bottles of wine and chocs are pointless

noddy, I agree. We did the chocolate and wine thing for our neighbours precisely because they did not kick off...

The house we are buying is a semi and the house we are attached to has been lovely with us bashing about in there as its been empty for a while and just glad to see a new family in there.

But the one we are not attached to is having a huge extension built and she is a bit more stuffy with us but has apologised for the mess but when I said not to worry ours would be started next spring looked a little nervous so time will tell!