I feel for you - I've had a woman spend upwards of three hours each and every afternoon cooking elaborate meals for her husband, effectively barring me from my own kitchen and using all my pans etc, not to mention filling the house with the smell of burnt grease (she wasn't even a good cook!) I've had a man 'take care of' his two-year-old son by parking him in front of my TV with cartoons on loud all day while he lounged on my couch playing on his iPad, while his wife conducted research at the university. I've had couples who don't leave their room all weekend, except to run to the bathroom giggling. I've had plenty of people get up at midday and then lounge around eating 'breakfast' until the middle of the afternoon, take three hours to use the shower etc and then go out to party all night and wake me up coming in at 3am.
Then I changed my listing description, plus the 'house rules' (the automated email they get sent when a booking confirms) AND the Guest Information Pack I leave in the room, to make it clear that I work from home and need peace and quiet in the daytime. You'll have to work out what wording, and what boundaries, work best for your lifestyle - e.g. maybe put in your listing what your working hours are and that you need the house to be quiet at those times - but what I say is that since my work is catering, my kitchen is my 'office' and after breakfast time it is not available to guests. I also make sure to have a conversation with them when they check-in asking them what their plans are for their time and is there information or any recommendations I can help them with - which allows me to also tell them what I'll be doing, e.g. if I am preparing for a delivery deadline or a farmers' market etc and emphasise again that I work from home, need my kitchen to myself, and am expecting them to be out for most of the day, although I don't make any hard and fast rules about when they come and go. that
Most of the time this works, but no matter what you do or say, you will occasionally get self-involved people who don't listen or don't care about you. That's when you have to politely confront them and sat you want them to be comfortable and enjoy their stay but they need to respect your space. If they leave you a nasty review, add a comment about it being such a pity that their expectations didn't line up with the service you provide, and restate firmly what your house rules are.
The thing that helped me get past the awkwardness was when someone pointed out to me that if you set firm boundaries, you can always relax them if you're getting on well with the guest and want to go above-and-beyond for them. If your boundaries are vague at the outset, it's much harder to firm them up once someone has already overstepped them. If you let guests think you're a walkover, you'll tend to get walked on, but since I 'toughened' up, I have generally had nicer guests 🙂
Good luck!
