Can't get used to new neighbour noise

[TTCorHouseReno]

I moved into a new house a week ago and I’m a nervous wreck already. It is semi-detached with a family of 4 living next door, kids look aged about 5 and 9 approx. The layout of the house is weird, so our bathrooms, 3rd bedroom, and kitchen are along the party wall. When I was in the bath last night I could hear neighbours using their bathroom (which made my bath far from relaxing!). I could also hear the kids singing/playing in their 3rd bedroom, and the sound travelled through the whole of the upstairs of our house. My last house was rented, and I could hear my neighbour (middle aged man who had his two kids to stay at weekends), but the rooms on the party line were the hallway, the main bedroom and the living room so we’d hear footsteps on the stairs and in the bedroom, the TV, washing machine vibrating throughout the house, talking, his youngest child having tantrums, front door closing and he had noisy pipes upstairs which vibrated our whole house. So I am used to hearing neighbours noise but this new house neighbour noise is annoying me far more. I feel like I can hear so much more of the daily happenings. I’ve already googled soundproofing options but this isn’t going to be possible in a kitchen and bathroom where the adjoining walls are tiled. Apart from saving furiously to one day move to a detached house, what else can I do? DP isn’t remotely fussed about any noise and says I’m making a mountain out of a molehill.

Everything is new so you're probably on high alert, not saying that they aren't being noisy but I would give it a month or so and see if you become desensitised to it.

There's not a huge amount you can do if the noise is just normal day to day living. I feel for you though. I also find neighbour noise like this very stressful.

Save up for the detached and move.

Moving is very, very stressful, and given that it's only been a week, I thinking you're just extra sensitive to everything in your new environment. Try to relax as best you can, and hopefully you'll feel better about things after you've had time to adjust.

I think this is just a case of being on high alert since it’s all new and just needing time to get used to the new patterns and environment. Honestly how much can hearing normal household noise in the kitchen really be disrupting you. Can you play music or put the radio on, not mega loud obviously, but just so you’re listening to something rather than listening out for neighbour noise?

A week??

you've hardly given yourself time to get used to it!

it's not a 'weird' layout at all, it's perfectly normal.

I've lived through antisocial behaviour, am completely scarred from it and now so super sensitive to noise it drives me to distraction. I'll even turn the television down to listen to the noise, winding myself up even further. Please don't be like me.
As others have said the rooms affected don't need to be silent and you'd have to be very unlucky to always have a bath at the exact same time the family are in their bathroom.
Put some nice music on and try to chill and not let it get to you.

I hope you get used to it soon. I'm in an end of terrace and oddly I find noise from the one not attached more annoying than the family who are attached. It's because the one not attached is a permanent tinkerer and always banging around outside. The family attached I don't hear much

Crumbs - I’ve lived with antisocial neighbours before too, years ago in my first flat. neighbour upstairs used to play loud music all hours and wouldn’t answer the door when we tried to talk to her about it. I think that has left me with some kind of PTSD

I genuinely could’ve written this post myself! Teen DD and I moved from a detached to a semi-detached last week and have been really struggling with the neighbour’s noise. I’ve lived in semis before but have never experienced anything like this.

The bedrooms and living room are against the party wall and full conversations can be heard word for word, especially in DD’s bedroom where the neighbour seems to work from home taking calls all day in the room opposite. There are constant doors slamming + footsteps which actually woke me up on the first night thinking there was an intruder. It has turned DD in particular into a nervous wreck. She feels she can’t get any peace and I’ve had to buy her noise cancelling earphones to mask it.

Thankfully it is only a rental with a year long contract, but it got me thinking what on earth I would do if this was a house I’d actually bought. It’s still hard enough to live with though and I can’t imagine it will be a particularly easy year here

I would highly recommend a white noise machine - especially Lectrofan - your brain adjusts to the white noise eventually and it completely resolved our old flat noise issues

@clipclop5 sorry to hear you’re dealing with the same! I think that’s what I’m struggling with maybe, we’ve bought this house so are stuck here for the foreseeable. It’ll be years before we can afford a detached. When I was renting before I always thought ‘well if the neighbours are that bad at least I can move easily’

@OscarandLucinda thanks I have heard a few people suggest white noise machines. I’ve actually started listening to some on Spotify via my AirPods on the noise cancelling setting today, might also invest in a machine….

I had the same issue in previous houses, more due to poor soundproofing than neighbours being particularly noisy. In the end I moved to a detached and would never consider another attached house again.

Soundproofing is generally very expensive to do correctly, and extremely difficult to get right because sound travels through various routes, other than just the party wall, which can be hard to determine. Only company I personally ever saw with a level of credibility was QuietCo, but it would cost thousands per room. Wouldn't recommend attempting it, and I'd put the money towards moving in future instead.

What helped me to deal with noise (especially at night) was using an office fan at night alongside the Lectrofan white noise machine. Also I think it slightly helped trying to have the attitude of not trying to be too quiet and thinking about every noise I made, and also know that the neighbours aren't trying to annoy you - they are just living normally (as you know). Filling your own house with slightly more noise during the day can take the edge of the neighbour noise.

I have heard of cases where people would rent out their owned house and moved, either bought or rented, a detached, the latter being more realistic in most cases. It is expensive but moving was the solution for me personally. I think the past experiences also contributed to being fairly noise sensitive, so it would have led to being very unhappy had I stayed in an attached house. Luckily, was before my son was born so it was not as much of an issue to relocate.

I moved due to noisy neighbors and it took me at least 18 months to even get half over it. I had both sides. All through the pandemic whilst I worked and they did not.

One side would scream at night with her bf for hours on end. It would wake me at least twice a week. Then the non attached side played really loud music for 10 hours a day. Most nights I had 3 hours of sleep.

What I learnt from it was no amount of reasoning or intervention worked. Our council were useless. I found out that both sides hated noise from others!

I now live surrounded by more people and it's much quieter. It's not normal to not consider your neighbors.

I will never have attached walls again without good soundproofing.

You could talk to them. Although in my experience it didn't work. Or you could be noisy.

Why are people talking about anti-social noise? What OP describes is anything but. It is normal family noise from the people who were there first. OP I am sorry that you are suffering but you need to get a white-noise machine and a good pair of noise-cancelling headphones while you give yourself time to adjust.

The same here! The exact same here!

My former neighbours were the same for 26 years. For 23 we got on famously but sadly 22.5 years in the husband passed away. 6 months later she moved her boyfriend in and he was horrendous (as well as abusive to her too and cheated regularly.) he would hammer on the walls, scream abuse through, play abusive songs, argue full blast with neighbour, play music full blast onto the early hours...make loud sex noises and generally was unpleasant. For 3 years we couldn't relax and sadly 2 years of that was covid so there was next to no help from the council other than "we will send a letter. Do keep a diary."

Thankfully approx 2 months ago she moved and now there's a mum and her three kids. One of the kids plays their music just as loudly as he did and they shout and argue as kids do.

I now cannot sit in silence, even though I know the abusive arse has gone and its just a family living their lives. I hear their radio/music/tv and get triggered by it and "wait for the next abuse" (even though he's gone) and turn down my music or TV to listen out for theirs and wind myself up further like crumbs does.

Don't be like us. It's awful. Its easier said than done but I'm hoping in time we all adjust and become used to it and don't have to constantly listen out for it. Try and distract yourself. Read a magazine and play some music so your brain is fully engaged whilst enjoying your bath or similar. That's what I'm trying to do to train myself out of it.

Failing that let's win the lottery and move to our detached in the middle of nowhere houses a few miles apart from each other... We know how it feels so would keep it down outside too 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

To joke that someone's music has given you ptsd is really offensive tbh.

You've not really had enough time to settle in and adapt to the noise yet tbh.

We also live in a semi detached, and my DH and the man next door seem to be having a Dad-off with their excessively loud sneezing through the wall 🤣

I don’t think pp can be reading the OP properly. Most of the noise OP describes is from her previous neighbour. From the current neighbours she has heard them using their bathroom (which I acknowledge is not pleasant to hear but hardly unreasonable use of their own house) and a child singing / playing in their bedroom. None of this is unreasonable or anti-social.

Thank you to the poster who mentioned white noise machines. I purchased one last night not expecting much but wanting to try de-escalate my bodies reaction to noise from that house now that my ex neighbours boyfriend and abusive neighbour is no longer there and it's now a mum and three teens.

As I type this, I've just moved upstairs to find two of them were scraping wallpaper off and hammering something on occasion on the party wall to my room whilst talking loudly to each other over the loud music they were playing.

I instantly plugged in the white noise machine and set it to thunderstorm and turned it up a little. I now cannot hear anything from that side other than the occasional knock on the wall of the hammer that nothing would be able to stifle anyway

Hopefully given the time even that will stop soon 🤦🏻‍♀️. Thank you! I'm feeling a lot more at peace with that playing than I would be otherwise. I wish I'd known about these over the last three years to not hear most of what the old neighbour used to do then!

@HashtagShitShop Glad to hear this thread has helped you find a solution!
I'm still finding it odd that I can hear bathroom noises, and also our downstairs loos are joined on the party wall too... It's just weird having a wee and hearing voices in the loo next to me