To be fed up of renovations on a nearby house

Daisend I have agreed to the trees being cut as long as it's at their expense. I hope they will replace them with smaller ones. Nothing has happened yet.
I have been thinking of downsizing myself for several years but after reading these horror stories, I am losing the will.
So many things to consider.
Inconsiderate neighbours would be high on the list.
Also although my house is too big, it has the ideal location.
Any suggestions?

Try having renovations next door to your semi detached house for nineteen years. There was not a wall or a piece of mortar that had not been drilled into. The laugh of it all was- once he thought he had completed the job, his wife would change her mind & insist he pulled it all down and start again??? thank goodness they’ve recently moved to another “ project “. Eventually the DIY will be the death of him we think -as he isn’t in tiptop condition for almost 60 years of age. Don’t even get me started on lighting an impromptu bonfire or bbq without notifying any neighbours about their laundry on line.

That sounds unbelievably dreadful and genuin6should not be allowed.

If people can't consume impact they're having on their neighbours then legislation and limits need to kick in.
No doubt these same people will start moaning about the 'nanny state' without realising for a minute that they're the reason everything has to be spelled out via regulations.

I enjoyed reading this thread because we had the neighbour building project from hell for about five years and its nice to know we were not the only ones, although commiserations to anybody with this issue. Our neighbour was 'in the trade' and all the work was done for 'mate's rates'. What this meant in practice was the mates turned up either before going to work on their main project (i.e. crack of dawn) or afterwards, or at the weekend, or on bank holidays. Every single time we had friends or family round the racket was continous and our garden was out of action. Utterly infuriating. I went round to complain once in about year four when they started digging up the concrete drive at 6am on Easter Sunday. I explained that we had picked our daughter up from Heathrow at midnight and didnt get to bed until 2am and our whole house was shaking to its foundations so please could they wait until 8am to continue the work. I got a tirade of foul mouthed abuse and an extra helping of noise for the final year of the project!

That is so dreadful SunnySusie I hope it stopped after that and your neighbour moved on?

You have my total sympathy.

Man next door to my last house put up scaffolding in my garden to do work to extend his house ( apparently I had no rights to stop him) and had that scaffolding there for over a year.

The poles prevented my elder daughter from opening any of her windows and the workers had to tramp round my house and into my garden to work.

It was hell on earth. As others have said here, noise, language and lumps of concrete dropped in my garden etc. Hell.

I hope for your sake it ends soon and you can have your peace of mind back.

We had this at the start of the first lockdown and it lasted 2 years. Then another neighbour decided on renovations and we had it for another year. At least they waited until the first one was completed it would have been pandemonium otherwise as we live in a 4 house cul de sac.

Lots of work going on everywhere at the moment. Probably because it’s cheaper to renovate than move. Also you get something in return for your outlay whereas buying a new property incurs lots of costs that don’t give you tangible benefits. The biggest being stamp duty. That’s almost certainly why people buy smaller houses and extend them.

Any building work will eventually come to an end. I do wonder why you are raging on here rather than talking to the person who is having the work done. Surely, any problems should be sorted with them.

Our new neighbours moved in a year ago. They had "downsized" from a six bedroomed house to the four bedroom next door to us. They immediately put in for planning permission to build an side extension for a utility room. Garden has been landscaped, front drive paved over and now they are having the garage roof replaced. Add to that, he is a DIY obsessive and is always drilling, banging. power sawing and any other job which causes noise and disturbance at all hours. I have forgotten what peace and quiet is. They are both in their 80s!!!!

Apologies. You could be my neighbour. We started renovating our house January 2021 with a 6 month time line. We are still going. Mainly due to builder disappearing for weeks on end at times leaving us living in a building site. It has been a nightmare. I am now having to instruct separate trades just to be completed. I felt so bad about the disruption we have caused I went to all surrounding neighbours at Christmas with wine and chocolate to apologise and let them know what was happening. We are nearly done with the external stuff. Mainly carpentry Inside and decorating now. To their credit our neighbours were understanding. Mainly elderly. House had been empty for 7 yrs when we bought it. We knew we needed to extend but location was perfect. Sorry.

I did rage to the project manager Theoddbird . I even called the police when kids were climbing on the scaffolding, which was in my garden. Almost all my plants died under there during that year so I asked for some compensation. I got the £300 I had asked for (itemised to include compost and a gardener's time)
It is only now that the building work is finished that the architect mentioned my trees. I must say I thought it funny/ strange.
I feel fairly helpless. I am on my own. The building in question is a public building and £££k have been spent on it of grant and public money. I was invited to the grand opening in November (facemasks worn and a cup of lukewarm tea - none of your wine and chocolate Duchess)

Here is my brave honeysuckle last year.

And here it is today

Around here (NE London/Essex) when a house is sold - nobody moves in. The builders and skips arrive, there's months of noise, swearing, litter, dust and disruption - then eventually it's occupied. No, it's not a young couple (they can't afford these houses) it's let to house sharers as a 'party house' or a large, extended family move in. Of course, there's never enough parking space for them

(and) it's not about renovations being cheaper than moving - it's all about how local extended families invest their money, always in property (and all off the books, I suspect).

When I was working from home in London, we had building work next door from March to October one year. Angle grinders going day and night, Jack hammers, complete gutting of ground floor. I had to negotiate an hours silence between 1pm and 2pm, in order for me to make work phone calls. The builders fell out with everyone in the street. They were cutting something, resting on another neighbours car bonnet - he ran out of his house and gave them what for. Another neighbour who started work at 5am 6 days a week, complained when they worked past 9pm.

My parents suffered from this when the perfectly nice cottage beside theirs in the Borders was bought by a young couple with DIY ambitions and it was a building site with a junkyard for a garden for the next 20 years. Fortunately there was enough space not to be impacted , except aesthetically- and mum’s rhododendrons did a good job of screening them.
On the other hand though, D and SIL set things in motion over a year ago to do a loft conversion on their little 2 up 2 down Victorian terraced house in London. Everything was booked for it to be done before their second baby was born in September - or so they thought.
A stroppy neighbour on one side suddenly retracted her verbal consent to their plans, so an independent surveyor was called in (finding entirely in D and SIL’s favour) but it put them back by nearly 6 weeks, they lost their slot with the builder, then delivery times for materials started to fall by the wayside, and fortunately the baby arrived at 3 in the morning (September) or the builders would have been boiling the kettles and getting the towels. I believe the scaffolding is all down now, but the delays also put the project way over budget and D’s BP and post natal emotional health were a major issue.

People used to get concerned about making a good first impression on neighbours.
Now many people seriously annoy their new neighbours before they've even moved in. I would be mortified to live into a new house knowing I'd caused massive inconvenience and disturbance to everyone for over a year.

MOVE into a new house.

Hetty58

(and) it's not about renovations being cheaper than moving - it's all about how local extended families invest their money, always in property (and all off the books, I suspect).

Actually it often is,
You can’t generalise like this.
When you are happy in a neighbourhood, schools or nurseries right for the children and you have a supportive circle of friends as both my daughters and their husbands in Walthamstow do, renovating in one case and extending upwards in the other, is preferable in every sense. I’m not saying your experience is invalid - just not the only version.

Sounds like you love be near me, Vintagejazz. The house, next but one to me is now enormous ( 6 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms and a dormer games and cinema room). It makes our little semis look like garden sheds and it has taken many months to get to a half finished state. Sometimes it’s abandoned for weeks. I’m just relieved that it’s not an HMO.

It's about balance though. A neighbour building up into the loft to create an extra bedroom, or extending the kitchen (along with offering car cleaning vouchers and bottles of wine to households who have been affected by noise and dirt) is one thing.
People living elsewhere while creating lengthy periods of inconvenience and disruption for long suffering neighbours in order to completely change everything about a house, effectively creating a building site, and making no acknowledgement of this is another.

Sorry that reply was to Maw.

Can’t imagine why that was to me, Vintagejazz it has no bearing on a situation you know nothing about and I do wish people would not make sweeping judgements in ignorance of the facts.
Yes inconsiderate renovation work is annoying - I have no argument with that, as this was not, but so are neighbours who see plans, agree them, agree timescales, whose property is unaffected (apart from SIL’s offer to let the neighbour use the scaffolding they were paying for to do some very necessary repairs on the neighbours side) who then start raising spurious objections, fail to respond to letters, claim not to know who holds the title to the house, and generally do all they can to be unpleasant and obstructive without a leg to stand on.