My boyfriend and I live on the top floor of an old old condo with only a few units. And nothing we do seems to stop the neighbours from complaining every time we make the slightest noise.
We have done everything I can think of:
- tiptoe everywhere at all times and never ever wear shoes inside
- vacuum or clean only once a month (way less than we’d like)
- limit intimacy to be on the earlier side, or in rooms other than the bedroom
- have literally 3x those little fabric foot-stoppers on every piece of furniture that might get pulled around or sat on
- bought about $250 of carpets for the apartment that we would not otherwise have (the only thing I’ve put my foot down on is putting a carpet in the dining room, because I think that would be gross and I’ve already covered the rest of my house in rugs)
- play our record player or any non-headphone music at minimum volume
- adjusted our bedtime to try and match theirs (they seem to go to bed at 10pm judging by when the texts arrive)
- text every time I’m planning to have guests over so they’re aware
- don’t use the washer/dryer that came with the apt because it shakes the floor and bothers them
- only play rhythm/dancing games, which I LOVE, when I know 100% that they are gone
- even though both my BF and I are musicians (violin and guitar), we never play because it’s not worth the angry text we would get
And yet it goes on. They have texted when we sit at the dining room table, when we go to bed, when I get too many texts (apparently they can hear the buzz even though it’s on the kitchen counter), when we take out the trash in the kitchen when I accidentally bump into something in the bedroom. It is making us feel like our only option is to stand still and do nothing.
About a month ago, they played really loud music in the bedroom at 6am (like bumping club music) which we thought was weird but not bothersome. But then, more recently, I dropped the remote in the bedroom at midnight, and the next morning at 6am they started banging on the ceiling right below the bed – not in response to anything we did, obviously, since we were asleep, but it seemed like revenge for waking them up.
It’s true, the walls are thin – I know because I hear their baby crying all the time, and I hear them fighting (though I wish they would enunciate more when they yell at each other, I’m petty like that). I truly sympathize with them, it must really suck to live in such a fragile building that you can hear when people so much as walk around. It’s just that there is nothing more I feel I can do. But I also feel helpless and frustrated that despite the fact that we have never done anything intentionally to bother them, they are now trying to hurt us because of things we can’t avoid.
I have also recently asked the neighbor who lives below THEM if noise is ever a problem for her. Her answer: yeah, they wake me up all the time, but I figure it’s an old apartment and they can’t really do anything about it. Which is the perspective I, my boyfriend, and everyone else I’ve ever known have had about neighbor noise.
What can I do?