LOL! My vocab during that time had a lot more F words and salty euphemisms than it does now. I can’t believe both my son and I would take turns yelling STFU toward their house because we totally had enough!!!
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We are facing a major building renovation ourselves. We’ve chosen to pull the property from Air during that time and find a longer-term tenant. It won’t make us rich, but it will limit the damage, I guess you could say. The difference is that we knew this was coming when we bought the home (I am not sure where you live, but does your local council not notify neighbours when planning permission has been been sought and again when granted?).
Along those lines, ordinary winters are very slow for us. We were again faced with putting in a standard tenant, even before construction begins, and the amount of rent we could charge is pretty poor. And then I stumbled on a company offering fully-furnished high-quality lets and I was aghast at what they charge for people unable/unwilling to take on a proper fixed-length tenancy. Turns out we make a very decent compromise if we simply leave it furnished and advertise a minimum stay of one month with all bills included. It’s in who you market to and how you find the guests. Obviously YMMV if you’re not in a “business” location likely to attract white-collar visitors coming for work, but if you are, look into it, you may be pleasantly surprised, and if they’re not arranged inside Air, they can’t leave a negative review (I’m not suggesting you cheat the system, just that it’s not the only booking option out there when you’re letting for a month at a time).
I have a Host friend in New Orleans who faced the same issue. A new condo put up right next door. She did have guest leave because of construction, but she bought noise reducing acrylic sheets and had them inserted into the windows that face next door and that made a difference. Plus, she learned to manage expectations. There is SO MUCH construction and renovation going on in NOLA it is hard to get away from it. She just needed to make sure guests were aware.
She also turned the site manager into a friend rather than a foe and he always gave her a heads up when there was real noise planned. In the end, he let her pick out the material for the fence that separated their properties.
I just went through the same thing on the lot next door to me. It turned out to have little, if any, effect on my guests. Keep in mind construction workers usually knock off by 4:00 pm and most guests aren’t at your place to just hang out in the house. They’re out and about enjoying the area. If you do get any complaints, offer a bottle of wine or appetizers. Worked great for me and we all had fun.
Not around here. Around here, they work until the sun goes down. We have a very long winter, and everyone wants to enclose that envelope before the first snow. Can’t tell you how annoying it is to be hearing construction noise at 7pm when it is the perfect time to sit in the garden.
One thing to think about too is that there are always delays. My own kitchen remodel (upstairs) kept getting rescheduled. First I scheduled it for the dead season. Then the contractor pushed it into the peak season. Finally it dragged on so long it was in the dead season again, and then it was finally finished when there were no guests here and it was dead. 
Exactly, also different stages of, if cement not too bad start to finish, if wood then during framing (a few weeks). True is a bit of a bummer, but oftentimes humans tend to be exceptionally tolerant of a few things, perhaps construction is one; many of us have had a house build some time in our lives.
I had a German women complain about birds flying over the back garden, we live close to the sea so do hear gulls and about a dog she could hear in the distance. Some people wont tolerate noise so always best to disclose. She mentioned it in the review.,Thankfully it has not put off any other germans
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Funny! 
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This is beyond Redickalaus. What are you supposed to do, get out your hunting rifle and bird dogs and go shoot them when they fly over? Jeeze!!!
Seriously, complaining about the birds in the sky? What is next… ???
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Oh, Kona, whistling parrot - pfff! try a pair of peacocks 10 metres away in the garden across the road. I literally was awake sobbing on the third morning at 3 am telling my husband we’d have to move …
Spoke to the owner, who was very sorry but told me they were beautiful birds (true) and only made that noise in the mating season. When was the mating season? March to November … Very luckily before I lost my sanity someone clearly higher up in the pecking order in the Resident’s Association also complained so and two days later I realised I’d slept through the night … peabirds gone!
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“The full moon was too bright and light came into my room. I couldn’t sleep.”
“It got dark so early and I wasn’t done enjoying the sunset.”
“The thunder and lightning kept me awake.”
“It was so humid I was sweating”
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Well, I’ve got guests arriving tomorrow, and just today they have started some kind of work on my road…so tomorrow there will actually be a ‘road closed’ sign on my street and lord only knows what kind of noisy machinery going on here the day after tomorrow early in the morning. The crew of my town usually is out working by 7am. And these guests are the ones most likely to ding me in a review anyway…the Boston to Montreal or other way around crowd, they ALWAYS ding me on location because they are really not the type of guests I should accept. The location is NOT ideal for that purpose. Everyone else who comes here for the purpose of seeing this part of the world, gives good reviews. ugh…I should have never said yes. And I get way too stressed out with these types guests…so I’m going to never accept them again. And I’m not saying anything bad about Canadians or peeps from Boston, just saying…my ABB is not a good fit for those who are not going to take time to smell the pine trees
What if you inform them of the work and ask them if they want to cancel?
It took me 4 ABB messages and 4 texts over the past 3 days just to get him to pretty please tell me some idea of his possible arrival time. I’m just going to leave it alone. He won’t know they started today. I’ll just be like “oh wow, look at this!”. I may alter his reservation and give him $20 back to compensate, but it’s not going to change my poor score I’m going to give him for communication.
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Hilarious! The suspense is that we never know in advantage, the guests will most certainly come up with something, that we couldn’t imagine.
(Like at the moment we’re having a guest for the third night and he’s used the toilette once in the house!) He has a private shower though… hmm… We’ve got some weird guests one after another going one. Those were the days when I wrote here how lovely lovely lovely guests we had on a row. And some of them didn’t even write the reviews and I thought that well, it doesn’t matter because we had a good time and that’s all that matters. And now these (hmmm… how should I put this) somehow more peculiar guest do review us.
We were just informed, by our guests, of construction going on in the building next door. Great, what am I suppose to do about it? We live in a urban center, there is not much I can do. I called our neighbors to ask about the noise level, and they said it was loud this AM, but they phoned the council presidente and he spoke the workers to keep the noise tolerable, and that by this afternoon it was not bothersome. The guests are losing their minds, they were of course problemos to begin with (is my 120sqm flat big enough for 4 ppl, do the bedrooms share walls, how many bedroom doors are there, etc), so I’m not shocked.
I told them to cancel if they wanted, which they don’t, but I don’t actually want them in my house, as I know they are just going to give us a shit review and just be painful. Technically the booking person is not staying at the house (mother booked for daughter), which is against TOS, but I agreed to it. Yet, another reason never to allow 3 rd party bookings, I digress. Do I call ABB and boot them or is that too harsh? I’m not super concerned with the $$ part at this point, as I know if I ask them to leave we won’t get paid, but I’m thinking the headache may not be worth the $$.
As if you had any control over someone else’s construction projects. I have no advice, just commiserating. Urban is just that. Urban. A good friend of mine lives in the leafy suburbs and has had construction noise for over 6 months, so it isn’t just an urban-thing.
Thanks @smtucker. I know its not just an Urban thing, and I did not word that sentence properly in my haste to vent. We are so use to urban noise; traffic, construction, people sounds, etc, that I think people who live in the suburbs don’t take into account when they decide to visit a giant city like Barcelona. We have had this complaint on and off all summer, from US tourists who are not use to the noises. Oddly, all our friends in Barcelona comment how queit our flat is 
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The tenants in a next door house put their dog out the other night and forgot about it. It barked, whined, howled, bayed, cried and yipped from 11 am to 2 am. Straight into my window and of course the guest suite. I was cringing and mortified, just picturing what kind of godawful review I was going to get.
The next day the guests came up to ask me a question and I said I was so sorry about the dog last night.
Her reaction?
“What dog?”
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