I can hear my neighbour coughing and her phone ringing

[MaidofButtermere]

Recently moved into a lovely largish Edwardian semi. Have noticed I can hear our attached neighbour (sole occupier) cough. Morning, noon and bloody night. In the living room and in our bedroom. I also hear her phone ring. God knows how much din she gets from our house. Is there anyway we can cheaply install some sound insulation?

[ItsALuigi]

I looked into this once. I think it shaves a lot of space off your walls and isn't that effective anyway unfortunately. I could be wrong though!

[Millionprammiles]

We've had soundproofing panels (upstairs) and a soundproofing wall (downstairs) installed in our Edwardian semi.
Its very effective - our last neighbours were very noisy, the soundproofing meant we could no longer hear every conversation, tv, low level music etc. We could still hear their loud music/electric guitars/parties with the doors open though.

Now we have quieter neighbours and we literally can't tell if they're home or not and rarely even hear their two yr old. Bumped into the mum one morning and she was saying how their little boy had been up crying all night - we hadn't heard a thing.

It was installed quickly and tidily. Was expensive though.

You could also try putting bookshelves/cupboards against adjoining walls? Old houses can have porous brickwork though so noise can be an issue.

[MaidofButtermere]

How expensive, Million?

I smugly thought it was just new builds that had this problem. We used to live in a 60s semi and never heard a sound from our neighbours and their kids.

[Millionprammiles]

Am struggling to remember but I think maybe £1.5k-ish for three walls? That included re plastering and painting. Imagine it'd be cheaper if you did that bit yourselves or sourced elsewhere. We lost around 5cm room width.

It was a specialist sp company rather than a general builder. Latter might be cheaper (though if they install it wrong the whole thing has to be taken apart to be fixed).

[PigletJohn]

is the noise coming through the fireplace? The web between flues is often only half a brick thick, and frequently cracked.

[VertigoNun]

This problem was solved when my new neighbour took every piece of damp plaster off the wall and re plastered. I am very happy. Sadly it took a few months of the sounds of removing every piece of plaster.