Renovations and neighbours

[BlueCherry]

Hi - just want to have a vent. I’m going through a renovation of an old property. It’s a probate and hasn’t had work for 40y, so full electrics, removing lead piping, structural works, windows, roof, and the rest. I was prepared for dealing with difficult contractors. What I wasn’t prepared for was dealing with moaning neighbours.

I understand that building works are not pleasant for neighbours, but when I’ve been on the receiving end I’ve overlooked the cracked slates in my lightwell, scaffolding for months on my property without asking, noise, dirt in my garden, 6am skips, etc.

So far from my neighbours had too much vibration (when we were taking up a concrete slab for half a day), can you stop work for a week while my daughter does her GSCEs (I agreed), insisting I stop as we don’t have a party wall agreement (we didn’t need one and our structural engineer agreed), the landscaper hasn’t cut the overhang in their garden correctly (I’ll fix it, but is this even my responsibility?!), don’t allow skip replacement before 8am (I try but not in my control). These are all from different neighbours, so I can’t put it down to one disgruntled neighbour.

I just want an anonymous moan really, but I’m learning that people complain a lot.

You are not being unreasonable. We all know that living next to a building site is awful and the constant noise and vibration grates on your nerves. And the early things are particularly painful because it pierces any sense of peace you have in the morning. But still, we all have to suck it up because we will all do it to each other. Some neighbours are great and won’t say anything, others want to take all their frustration out on you.

I try to preempt complaints by giving lots of warning, give neighbours a bouquet of flowers , keep them abreast of progress and apologise profusely.

My neighbour ( Edwardian terrace) is doing a full renovation on her house. She's not living there, we're in our house all the time. We're two months in to a ( roughly) four month schedule of building.

It's noisy, very dusty ( inside my house) and unpleasant. And we have no control over timings etc. Her scaffolders damaged my plants and swore at me. I can't sit in my garden as bits of roof are dropping into it. I have to keep the blinds down in my bathroom all the time, as there's a chap right outside the window.

But....
It has to be done. The new neighbour seems to be a very decent woman. It will be nice to live next door to a much smarter house.

I am not moaning to her about any of it.

Also, don't forget at the end of it you have the benefit of a nice new house, your neighbours don't. They need a lot more patience than you do.

Pre warning people goes a long way here. Our neighbours were crap at letting us know in advance when we’d need to move our car out of the way for skips and deliveries so we’d get hammering on the door during work calls etc. it would be good to have heads up on the really noisy days so we could work from elsewhere, etc. We didn’t complain but better communication (we’re terraced) would’ve made it much easier. Also some thanks at the end for putting up with it all.

You sound very generous as it goes, putting work on hold for a week while their DD did her GCSEs.
The year over lockdown when next door had their house gutted and renovated was awful. We asked them for a bit of consideration when they were jackhammering a concrete floor up at 9pm one night and pointed out a bit of advance notice about the grinding out for repointing would have been nice so we could have moved our cars (they offered for their builder’s apprentice to wash our cars - er, no thanks!) but otherwise we bit our tongues in the interests of future neighbourliness. We get on ok now, take parcels in etc but when we get round to doing much the same to our house they will just have to suck it up, as we had to.

It's part and parcel of doing dirty, noisy, disruptive building work. Neighbours will be concerned about the things that most directly impact them, even if those things are low on your priority list in the building project. You have to remember that you get a huge reward for all the disruption whereas theirs is fairly small in terms of the general look of the neighbourhood. Especially annoying if you have the luxury of not living in the property while they have to live with it day in day out for months on end

Your building work is more of a pain in the arse for your neighbours than it is a blessing.

You should be more understanding...

Of course it must be really disruptive and annoying for them.

I had to do a lot of work when I bought an old house two years ago and wrote to my neighbours in advance to let them know what was happening and how long it would take.

The various tradespeople were always done by 4pm and there was no work at weekends and I made sure there was no issue with skips or rubbish being left around.

OP, if more than one neighbour is complaining, it must be really bad. You can't put it down to a grumpy so-and-so.

I think you need to be more communicative, more considerate and heavy on the flowers, chocolates and apologies.

I'm renovating at the moment and I'm keeping my neighbours up to date and I'm apologising. I plan to get them a treat each once this leg of it has finished. They've been so lovely about it.

I lived next door to and moved from a house where we had loud building work every single day for 6 months.

Maybe you could try a gift and talking to them? Give them a timeline of when it will be finished?