Pro Tip: If you don’t want to hear the noise your neighbors make, you should consider not having neighbors!
That is basically the only way to ensure you will not be bothered by the noise they make while they go about their lives. Because let’s face it, it doesn’t matter if you live in a house, a building, or an apartment duplex: as long as someone lives next door, you are going to hear what they are up to.
Sure, some living situations are worse than others. Someone who lives in a house will probably not hear their neighbors dragging a chair across the floor, as someone with upstairs neighbors might, but noise has a tendency to come in many ways. Sometimes it’s the moving furniture, while other times it is someone playing guitar. Either way, the only people who get to avoid a noisy neighbor are those who live in an area so secluded that they basically have no neighbors at all.
Being the “noisy” neighbors is also no picnic, because then you have to deal with complaining residents who have a problem with every step you take, which is the issue the neighbors below have to deal with. They live in a newly built duplex, maybe the worst kind of building to live in if you want to avoid other people’s noise. Sadly for them, the sound insulation between their unit and the one next door basically does not exist. Despite the problem being neither of the residents’ fault, but the building itself, they needed to find a way to fix it, since neither of them wanted to hear everything that goes on in the other’s home.
After discussing the problem with the builder and even contacting the city, each of the residents was given $5k to fix the insulation on their side. But even after both of them soundproofed their apartments, it still wasn’t enough for one side of the duplex. They still complained about noise and still blamed their residents for it. They wanted more work to be done to fix the soundproofing, and they didn’t care who paid for it.
Should the other neighbors spend more money to further fix the issue, or should they refuse to keep up with this conversation?
