Heads up to homeowners doing renovations and construction

Apologize for the Nextdoor-type post here; I’m not a Karen I swear.

My wife and I are currently renovating our house on Beacon Hill and were informed by a neighbor yesterday that around 6pm a couple of sketchballs showed up and started casing the joint. One dude just looked like your average junkie: carrying around a lot of bullshit but he was also wearing one of those modern single-hole ski masks. I arrived 15 minutes later and he was still there but a second guy had appeared by that point and he was wearing fake construction gear: a sweatshirt with a moving company logo on it, a tool belt with a hammer and some other stuff like climbing ropes and was putting on a high-viz vest and when I showed up he jumped like I scared the shit out of him.

I asked what he was doing there and he said that he just stopped to use our port-a-potty but they didn’t move on until I went back outside and confronted them. I stayed and puttered around the house until well after dark to deter any further incursions but it’s got me pretty freaked. I feel like if we lived on a major arterial it wouldn’t have me so shook but we live deep in a neighborhood on a dead-end street so this feels less like stopping by and more like seeking out.

I’ve since installed a boatload of motion-sensor floodlights and indoor motion alarms and have connected my Ring stuff to our neighbors wifi while ours is down and am going to start sleeping there in the finished basement until the siding and drywall get done and it starts to look like a normal house again.

We’re trying to get our GC to do a better job of cleaning up the site every day to make it look less like a construction zone, but he’s a slacker and it’s an uphill battle. At least he’s going to start locking the Honey Bucket every night.

Has anyone ever dealt with anything like this? Any thoughts on what else I could do to deter break-in/robbery? In Reddit’s opinion would walking out to tell them to move on with a firearm in hand upped the deterrence factor or just invited retaliation? I’m not a tacticlol cosplayer, I’m just a guy who liked to hunt with his dad before he passed, so I’d just be carrying it casually rather than brandishing it or hoping for a conflict.

This reno is too far behind for us to have to re-wire the whole place because some tweakers stripped our copper.