Advice please?? Renovations next door

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We have been living next to an empty house for years that has been wasting away. It has just recently been bought and the new owners are planning of renovating the hell out of it- which is great for them but we share walls with them. Our DS is just one and still has 1-2 naps a day.

How can we get through the upcoming weeks of construction noises that will be happening? I will lose my marbles completely if DS doesn't nap.

Please help!

They have to (should) work to reasonable hours, so not early in the morning / late at night and not usually all weekend. However, they can work during the day - I would just be neighbourly, take a bottle of wine round to welcome them / say hello, explain that you've got a young baby and ask if there is any chance they could keep the noise down between 1-2pm or whatever would work for you. Failing that, you'll have to put him in a room on the opposite side of the house, door closed etc to limit the noise.

Put a note through the door Say something along the lines of

We appreciate you have a lot of work to do on the house and want to get on with it. However, we have a 1yo and were hoping we could arrange a couple of periods in the day where no or quiet work could be done as I'm sure you'll appreciate, being a baby he still needs to nap & with lockdown we have no option but to be at home Please give me a call to discuss. Thank you

We had our loft converted and my DD just slept through the work, in a room directly underneath! It may not be an issue. But do you have any rooms that aren’t attached to theirs? I’d look at moving naps to as far away from adjoining walls as possible.

We had walls knocked through in our old house when DS was about 1, he slept through it happily and even went off to sleep easily while they were banging and clanging directly underneath him. It may be fine. Unfortunately if it’s a renovation time is money, you may have to get him off to sleep in the buggy on a walk or something if he won’t settle.

Your baby is going to want to nap during the normal working day. I found during similar work that tapes of “white” noise works. It seems counterintuitive to make it more noisy, but a 1 hour tape of the vacuum running, will block out the worst of the noise and train your baby not to be so sensitive to waking up.

Sounds silly but it works. 🙂

I came to say use white noise but a PP beat me to it. We use it for our DS and the continuous sound will cover the loud noises that may happen intermittently. My attached neighbour (semi) had a kitchen extension just as my son was born.

If it's builders they usually do take a lunch break, you could ask them what time. Also construction does go through noisy and quiet stages, it's not non stop hammering, so you can always ask how long they expect various activities to take, if they are breaking out concrete or something.

I have sympathy for you! Take it as read that the builders, despite any promises, will not be making too much effort to be quiet. It's unavoidable I'm afraid :(
Try to keep baby on the opposite side of the house and as suggested use a white noise generator (you can get apps on your phone / tablet for this). Not an awful lot else to do without soundproofing or taking naps elsewhere, also difficult at the moment!

Depending on what works they’re doing, is it possible they’ll need to wait for planning permission? Either way, agree with PPs they should stick to working hours eg not before 8am on weekdays.
We just renovated our semi detached wreck of a house, after having lived in it for a period not done up. We warned our neighbours when work would start, how long it was estimated to take and gave them our and the builders numbers. I’d recommend you ask them for their contact details in case you need them and also ask for warning they are doing any particularly noisy works so you can go for a walk/be prepared because of the baby.

We are having building work done at the moment and my child just sleeps through it.
He also slept through the bathroom renovation when he was 7 months.

You could still just put your baby in the pram and walk for the nap. This was my plan if he struggled with his nap.