As someone who has lived in attached living all but two years of her life, you would think I would be used to noisy, inconsiderate neighbors by now. I think most of us know that as you age, your tolerance for noise gets lower, more so if you're an HSP who processes noise differently than 80% of the population. My grandma always had problems with loud noises including screaming grandkids (not me- I was an only for 8 years and an angel, obviously), repetitive noises, etc and I got the same gene. When the pandemic started and we were all relegated to working from home, joyfully, so were our two attached neighbors. (Dripping with sarcasm.) One neighbor has his own disaster clean up business and has ZERO regard that his house is attached to someone else and the other has been here over 25 years like us and she refuses to train her dogs and guess who got a new puppy a year into the pandemic? Declining mental health meant all of the slamming microwaves/cupboards, thudding footsteps up and down stairs, a barking demon dog whose dainty boy paws are unable to touch the ground because she basically straps him into a papoose sling on their "walks" and a newly mounted TV on his side of the back of our living room wall that blasts talk TV meant the home that was supposed to be our respite from the outside world became a prison. This place is paid off and you've seen the housing market. Moving isn't happening.
A plethora of online articles give the same BAD advice to help you deal with noisy neighbors. They are typically aimed at apartment dwellers saying things like "put up a bookcase on the offending wall and use books to mask the sound!" "Put up wall tapestries to absorb the sound!" "Throw down area rugs if you have hardwoods!" "Use a door sweep!" "Move your furniture around!" "Invest in a noise machine and/or earplugs!" and my favorite "talk to your neighbor in a nice tone- they may be unaware they are flaming assholes of the noise they're making!" These methods are tried by many desperate people to have a tolerable level of noise in their own home. 80% of these methods do nothing but drain your wallet and if you have a neighbor like ours who pulled a gun on the SWAT team after a barricade situation with his woman when he lost it a year into the world implosion and managed NOT to be prosecuted, a reasonable conversation is not on the menu. Of those methods the noise machine and earplugs brought only a moderate amount of relief but who should have to listen to whirring white noise all day or make their ears hurt every night and risk ear infections to get an uninterrupted night's sleep? The onus should be on home builders of any attached living to go above and beyond where soundproofing is concerned. There are codes in place but what was code 30 years ago isn't necessarily code now. (We found this out when we recently had to have our whole electrical panel upgraded to the tune of $6000 just to get it up to current code and undo the horrible job the original electrician did.)
Article after article said for any serious soundproofing just adding 5/8" drywall alone would go a long way in taking care of the problem. Some people said it solved all of their problems. Then you had quite a few saying that was nice but 'hold my beer' as they say. Use soundproof drywall and it's even better! Now I will say this is a much more expensive option especially now when the price of everything is up but also good luck finding it. It's like trying to trap a leprechaun or something. You have to likely use the contractors connection to get it and that's if they even can. Some contractors don't even WANT to deal with it because it's way heavier. Look I know you're going to charge me more for labor, do your job! HA! Good luck with that too but I digress. So let's say you find a contractor or local drywall supply store that is able to get it for you, now we look at the cost. At the time of publishing, regular 5/8" drywall is $13 sheet for the plain stuff and $23 for the fire rated. Wanna know how much soundproof drywall is per sheet? $70-74! Per. Sheet. Granted that sheet is a 4x10 over a 4x8 but still. Why so expensive? Because in between the gypsum that makes up sheet rock is a layer of either viscoelastics or ceramics that is a sound deadener. THAT is the operative word. Deadener. Many people call it soundproof drywall but there's no such thing. Now you can create a soundproof room using many of the usual techniques like sound deadening insulation, decoupling your walls with channels in a new build which is going to be effective but also knock off a few inches of space all the way around your room as well as the other solution of building a wall within a wall. Then there is what many consider the holy grail. Green glue. A viscoelastic ecto plasm looking tube or bucket that you apply to the back of drywall before installing it. This is considered a retrofit standard from the 7 bazillion articles we read.
So there were people who were in the same situation as us where they couldn't afford to go back to the studs for decoupling (and/or could afford to lose the room) and used 'soundproof' drywall with green glue with excellent, life changing results. Given I was getting such horrible anxiety that at one point I hadn't slept in 5 days straight and my motor functions began suffering, we had to take action. We did as much research as humanly possible and started the arduous process of trying to get drywallers to return our calls, try to explain this process and the materials needed for those who did bother calling back and then not have them completely abandon us because they either didn't want to say they didn't understand or didn't want to do the work. You would be amazed how many contractors just don't seem to want the work. What also might surprise you is how many highly rated contractors of ANY trade royally eff it up.
Now for the estimate. We decided to go with the worst offender since both neighbors are demons who escaped the 7th circle of Hell. Our biggest concern was the stringer for our stairs. The noise that woke me on the nightly was him slamming his microwave door into the next dimension and that was on the back of our stringer which we know from having been in there with the previous owner. One thing you will note if you do research is soundproofing techniques are not going to have much success against impact noises like slamming against studs, leadfooted Yeti neighbors walking on their heels and any kind of impact noise traveling through joists. Airborne noise is what you're fighting with the methods that don't involve decoupling so we knew we could be doing all of this to still end up hearing his microwave slam. (When I say slam, I mean picture someone slamming on old beater car door to make sure it shuts kind of slam.) We would have the main floor and going up and down both levels to do the whole party wall on his side. This consisted of what came out to be about 500 square feet on that side. Then of course you need the 15% 'waste' calculated in. I calculated what the cost would be of the materials alone which with the drywall, green glue and green glue sealant for any gaps would be about $3k. I knew to double it for labor and that should be a close ball park.
The first estimate we got was from a schmuck who barely even looked at the area we needed done. His estimate came in right where we thought but as we looked at the estimate it was for regular drywall and no sealant and we'd have to get the green glue. Um you're wanting to charge me $6K for drywall I know costs you $250 but you're charging us for the higher stuff and none of the other stuff we need?
Buh bye!
The second guy came a few days later and we found what we thought was the right guy for the job. We thought he understood the process but I started getting the feeling he didn't so I explained it a little more and it seemed to finally click. It made us leery but trust me when I tell you, good luck finding someone who has worked with green glue or who doesn't basically laugh in your face at the prospect. He initially started off saying soundproof drywall does nothing but then when the hubby said that's what we wanted he didn't say he thought we were wasting our money. (The Mr swears he doesn't remember him saying that, I do but in the end, doesn't matter. We were willing to pay it if even on the off chance it would work.) He said we would still be able to hear him though and wanted to make sure we understood unless we ripped out the walls and basically rebuilt the wheel, not to expect a miracle. We said we were hoping for 30-50% reduction in sound. He said "oh, or more!!" That gave us some hope. We were just ready to start the process and he seemed like he would do a good job for us so now it was waiting on his estimate. His supplier was able to get the sound deadening drywall in the form of Silent FX by CertainTeed. For their labor and supplies it was $6,000 and it was about $1000 for us to get the appropriate amounts of green glue and sealant. We got two green glue applicators (but only needed one so returned the unused one) for them to use with the bucket and within a few days we were on the schedule!
Swing back over Wednesday for part two!
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Happy Monday, have a great week!
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