DIY

The problem, Auntieflo is that it is a private gravelled access road, no paved area, just gravel that extends seamlessly up to the garage door.

After writing the post above another white van drew up beside the first one and completely blocked the width of the access road, at which point I did go out and ask the driver to move pointing out that DH's car, which is parked outside the house, was completely blocked in. The driver said he would only be there a few minutes, but i have heard that one before and he did move his van.

We are feeling rather sensitive about this at the moment. There was a HUGE (attendance numbers) funeral last week and even though we are about a quarter of a mile from the church there was parking on both sides of the road for about half a mile all round. I live in a village and the roads are narrow and unpavemented. The space between the cars each side of the road was barely a cars width. The road serves about 100 houses and several businesses and there was a queue of frustrated van and lorry drivers, including the large lorry delivering our new garden swing seat. He had to unload the swing seat into the garden of a house several doors down, thankfully we are good friends then DH and I had to unwrap the large palletted swing seat on their lawn and transport it bit by bit up the road, onto the access road and down to our house. The road was blocked for about three hours, with the Wake and everything.

M0nica, it is illegal to block a dropped kerb. So the builders should not park across your access

Reminds me of just after we moved here. There was a terrific racket at about quarter to seven one morning when our neighbour across the road started up his tank. DH stuck his head out of the window and yelled "what sort of time d'you call this?" he apologised but said he was off to a re-enactment and it took a while to "get her warmed up"! I hoped he was talking about the tank and not his wife! It made even more noise when it trundled off down the road. It doesn't get an outing very often thank goodness.

Ah - yes, differing expectations are a beggar aren't they? My husband is away a lot for his job and when he's at home he does a lot of work on both the house and garden. Much as we would like to take a day off on a bank holiday it would be more usual for my husband to be seizing the day and cracking on. However, we never start any noisy work until (often on the dot of) nine o'clock and I insist he finishes noisy work by eight o'clock in the evenings.

I live at the end of a cul-de-sac, one of three houses. 8 years ago the house closest to the road had major building work that lasted a year. Time again we couldn't get in or out of our house because the road was blocked by vans, or materials just delivered. We had a whole year of this.

This morning I woke at 7.30 to the whine of a cutter of some kind, that reminded me that next door's project started today.All morning a large white van has been parked outside our house, right across our drive way, blocking vehicle access. Fortunately I am home all day so it is not causing a problem, but my heart sank. The project is expected to take 9 months so we have 9 months of getting builders to move vans get materials off the road and on site

Do not get me wrong we have lovely neighbours and we all get on, but, they are out at work all day and no matter how much they tell builders not to block our access they are not at home when the builders are on site, so we have to police our access ourselves.

I thought you could make noise from around 7 am. My neighbours had a barbie, loads in garden, smoke coming from food etc., and lots of noise all day so I sat inside, watching tele with subtitles on and my ear defenders on too, lol, being ever so grumpy. I fell asleep. I am a miserable so and so sometimes.

8:15 is far too early to start drilling and banging outside, even on a normal day IMO.

Yup, always warn in advance. We must have driven our next door neighbour to distraction when we arrived here. Always explained what was happening, when and why and fortunately we are still speaking. . Sometimes her family came and spirited her away for the day, they speak to us too! Agree it's hard to avoid bank holiday work sometimes, but an explanation may have reduced irritation. Hope it stops soon.

would have been courteous if he actually called round to tell you! Ive new neighbours moved in the flat above so I expected some noise but last weekend they had a friend in doing some work all day friday and saturday....Sunday morning I thought peace and quiet but no I had to put up with banging and drilling from 9am to 5pm then he called on me at 5 past 5 to say he had finished all the work!! yes afraid to say I was rude to him..

Your neighbour was obviously think of your health. Most people die in bed, he was just getting you up as you are safer then.

Suppose I was feeling grumpy because it was my one chance for a lie in! Usually up and out to work.But at least it got me up to enjoy the sunshine.

Unless it was every day, it wouldn't bother me. If people work, they don't have much time for DIY

When would it be convenient to do it? If someone is at work during the week, evenings, weekends and bank holidays are the only time they have to undertake such projects. The problem is usually only short term, until the project is complete.

Someone doing noisy DIY every evening, week-end, bank holiday would be a different problem and should be reported to the local council noise nuisance department.

Unless it's an urgent repair I would be so cross