Anyone had soundproofing installed

[ILoveMyMonkey]

We've just moved to a terraced house with extremely thin walls and some very noisy neighbours - luckily not music type noise but constant running up and down the stairs, loud banging from jumping around and door slamming type noise, last night I was woken at 2:15 by someone jumping and banging on the stairs - anyway it's driving me insane so we're looking into soundproofing before we decorate.

Has anyone had soundproofing installed?

Did you get just soundproof plasterboarding or a stud wall filled with soundproof material and topped with soundproof boards?

Did you do it yourself or pay someone else to do it?

How effective is it?

Please help me

[Millionprammiles]

We've had it installed. Its very effective with voices/tv type noise (we could literally hear everything and so could our neighbours). Less effective with musical instruments or banging though.

We had the stud wall downstairs and the soundproof panels upstairs. The former is more effective so I'd recommend having that if poss but you need walls at right angles (we have fireplaces at angles upstairs).

All in all we're glad we had it done as it has definitely helped. We used a specialist soundproofing company, they were quick, efficient, tidy and helpful. Its looks a fairly specialist job so I wouldn't attempt it yourself unless you're particularly adept at DIY. If its wrongly installed it can 'bubble/wrinkle' and the whole thing would need to be re-done.

Its most effective if both houses have it done, could you speak to the neighbours? Some people just aren't that considerate or aware of how much noise they're making late at night, particularly if they're not worrying about waking young kids. Our neighbours genuinely didn't think their guitars at 11pm would disturb us .

[ILoveMyMonkey]

Omg guitars at 11pm, what is wrong with people?!

Strangely these people have 2 kids so they must either sleep like the dead, it isn't as loud in their house as it is in ours or it's the kids making the noise and the parents just ignore it; whatever it is I'm .

Thank you for all the information it's really helpful, we were hoping to do similar, stud wall downstairs and just boarding upstairs (to limit the amount of space we lose) but maybe we need to reconsider this.

We have spoken to them once and the noise improved for a couple of days and is now back to where it was before.

Thanks again

[CityDweller]

We had some in a previous flat - used the material inside wall option. Made some difference to tv/voices/our horrible neighbour swearing at her poor children but won't help much with impact noise such as jumping, etc. I'm glad we did it (a builder-type did it for us) but ultimately we ended up moving quite quickly, mostly due to the noise.

[CityDweller]

strikethrough fail

[ILoveMyMonkey]

Thank you citydweller that's useful info. Just had one quote today for £5K so might have to rethink and try builders instead.

[Toraleistripe]

We had someone do a new stud wall with sound proofing material packed inside. Lost about 5cm. Has worked well. Only muffles noise though.

Looking at a specialist company for out party wall downstairs. Our neighbours are horrible.

[sacbina]

We installed it ourselves. A type of rubber matting glued to wall, metal uprights to hold plasterboard. can't remember cost but was really easy