If you haven't read part one as to why we're going to attempt to soundproof our condo/townhome, click here. I'll wait.
I will be honest, we were both leery about going forward with this because it's a lot of money to spend on it may help and we had a lot of doubts about the weakness of the stringer with demon man's microwave being on the other side of it. (It still baffles us why people would super slam their microwave doors and break them long before they ever needed to wear out.) Before the drywaller could do his thing, we had to do ours which was removing the baseboards, door trim, anything on the wall, screws/nails, etc. Let me tell you, if you've never removed your baseboards, you are in for a serious shock. The stuff your builder will let slide under there is heinous. We had a HUGE gap at the landing of the basement stairs which backs up to his basement but also shares studs with his laundry room/kitchen area and the amount of air flow under there was shocking. I got these sound deadening mats for a different project and thought I could use them here since there was so much of a gap that caulking would be pointless. I cut strips thick enough to seal the bottom of the drywall, back of the concrete block wall and the floor. It immediately got rid of the draft swirling around behind that wall so that was a plus in my book. The other thing you have to do is fill any gaps/holes with acoustic sealant. This, in theory, is supposed to block a path for any noise to get through. Like those molly screw holes, gaps under drywall, at corners, around outlets, etc. All of it should be built up with acoustic sealant and the thing with that is even though they claim it doesn't shrink...it does. It shrinks and creates more holes. We were slightly alarmed when the drywall guy was like "I'll seal any gaps then mud and tape it an hour later. We've passed code before doing that." We made it clear we wanted a minimum of 24 hours because it shrinks and then you have holes and that defeats the entire purpose. So I filled all of the gaps under the drywall and every screw/nail hole we had. 12 hours later, 70% of them had receded and needed refilled so I did that. Then it was time to put down some ramboard on the newly installed hardwoods upstairs and a path where they would be walking downstairs. Everything that we could do, was done (or so we thought) and now it was time for them to come in and install what was supposed to be our saving grace.
Be aware if you're in a townhome community that the truck that will be delivering the drywall is HUGE. I'm talking stabilizers on the side like a fire truck and a crane. I don't know if this is because the sound dampening drywall is so much heavier and we had 18 sheets of it or what but I was about to faint waiting for the HOA gestapo to fine us for having a semi back there. (On our second drop off of 6 sheets, it was a smaller, less aggressive truck. Just wanted to give a heads up in case you were as shocked as we were at what showed up.) The wall on the one neighbors side was FULL of angles due to the stairs that there was no way people like us who have to do an online search about where 3/8" is on a measuring tape could handle. I so wish we had the ability to mud/tape properly too but we both suck at it so we're at the mercy of any drywaller that comes in here. I'll warn you up front, green glue is messy. We assumed they would cover the carpet they would be working on on the stairs and we were not going to be responsible for a trip hazard by putting something down ourselves. We assumed wrong and we have the ruined carpet to prove it. While we are having it replaced at some point down the road, they have made our home look like some slum we got for cheap and are going to flip or something. It is not a fun way to have your house returned to you and this is not the first drywaller to completely disrespect our property. Cover EVERYTHING you don't want ruined. I mean every. thing. You're gonna need a poopload of drop cloths (plastic and canvas), ramboard to protect your floors, rubbing alcohol to get off any surface they've glazed haphazardly with green glue and a whole lot of patience so you don't end up needing bail money. Actually, if you have the means just go to trade school and learn how to do it yourself then apprentice with an actual skilled craftsman who is a minimum of 60 years old and retired. This process will likely be less stressful and yield better results than any so called 4-5 star contractor you may find, in our experience(s).
Install day is always the day they show up on time to give the best impression. This will be the first and last time you will likely encounter such a thing. It was an 8 hour install day to do the main floor and the stairways going up and down on that side. Be prepared for the loudest noises of your life. As someone who already has an aversion to loud noises, it was hell on Earth. Here are some of the gifs I shot off to the Mr while they were screwing all day long, especially when they were right outside the bedroom. (All gifs via tenor.com)
So once the subcontractors installed the drywall (and covered every surface with green glue from our broom to door handles to the stringer) they left and the owner get to filling in the gaps with sealant. (By the way, we had to supply the green glue and sealant if I hadn't mentioned that. Amazon sells a big ol' tub of it and the applicators as well. If you only need a small amount for a few sheets of drywall and have a Menards in your state, they sell the tubes for almost half the price of Amazon.) One thing I will tell you is the second they leave, start inspecting the walls for open screw holes. Because while you can use a stud finder like a normal human, this shaman decided knocking on the walls for the thud of the stud was the way to go and we had 27 "swing and a miss" holes to fill which did not please me. (Those holes had to be filled twice- sometimes thrice due to the shrinking.) He said he'd be back the next day to re-fill the gaps (of which there were plenty in places we couldn't reach) then begin mudding and taping.
From this point on, he never showed up at the times he told us and his days were never as long as he said they would be. I was horrified at a few really blistered spots on the tape in a few places and had no idea how he was going to polish these turds he was laying. Then he came back to sand aka- destroy and fur up the drywall paper in spots where a sander never needed to touch as well as sand off the green glue handprints all over the drywall that looked like the Blair Witch basement. At that point we had a decision to make. While we have the house in shambles, do we go ahead with the other wall for the other neighbor or wait, recover and then rip the house apart in the future after we've given the green glue the proper 30-45 day cure period on demon man's wall? We decided we did not have it in us to ruin our summer as well which brought us to the next question. Go through the process of finding a new drywall company when we'd already blown through three at this point and some wouldn't even call us back or go with the devil we know and make him fix anything that comes up hopefully to our satisfaction? While we reeeally didn't want to give this guy more business, it unfortunately made sense for us to have him do the other wall when he finished with this one so we could just be done. We were going to have to make the call that even just solid mass should help block the airborne noise of our other neighbor's untrained dog. The estimate on the other much smaller wall was $3600 total so we had him put us on the schedule hoping that the promise of more work would make him do a better job.
Now let me say, I am a bit of a type A, not unreasonably so but I expect if I'm dropping $10K on beefing up each side of the wall that I don't have screws sticking out, seams showing, etc. I had all of that which he said would be fixed when he came to do the other wall. The other crew was a different one and despite us measuring and marking the friggin' studs for him, the genius still managed to miss 19x. Then the owner 'fixed' the stuff on the previous wall and got the smaller wall done in a few days. The Mr confirmed that as we found stuff as we primed that he would fix them, yes? Yes. Mmm hmm. Because the SoundFX is purple, it was incredibly difficult to see any issues. We knew that we had a very short time to get things primed despite being exhausted from the disruption to our lives because we felt like after a week, he was going to say we were done if he hadn't heard from us. Getting the drywall primed did a lot visually to help it feel less chaotic but it also brought out the glaring problems like seams we should not be able to see as well as sloppy parts that needed fixing. We marked all of the spots with tape and called him to come back out. He asked if we were still considering him for another project (not drywall) and obviously we had to say yes because the Mr felt strongly he was going to ghost us if we didn't have that in our back pocket. He came back out, chastised us for our primer choice (Zinnser BIN 123 which is a highly rated primer) and said they were all 'easy fixes.' Well apparently not because even though it appeared he fixed them, some things were still visible and other things didn't rear their heads until a week later when we knew we were now going to have to pay someone else to correct what this moron didn't do right to begin with. There was no calling him back. I will tell you why. Because you get to a point where lack of workmanship and disrespect to your property means you never want this person back in your home.
At this point, we were just happy it was 98% done and whatever we had to pay to get it to 100% and move the hell on with our lives would just have to happen and hope that we didn't get a fourth lemon drywaller company out here. It was an exhausting 3 week process. (Edit: drywallers will not fix what other drywallers effed up. You'll be called "picky." Guess which finger I'm holding up?)
Swing back on Monday to see if we regret spending that kind of money or if soundproofing really worked. Believe me, there were some surprises that of course, would only happen to us.
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I'm getting a good vibe here so I'm hopeful!
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