AIBU about downstairs neighbour?

[Hyca]

Hi, namechanger, I don't want to be outed in case my neighbour is on here!

I live in a 3 story house, my neighbour lives in the basement flat. We have been here for about 6 years, she lives there with her partner, been there about 18 months I think.

She has just come up to complain about the noise we make, and I am really annoyed with her.

She is in her 20s, but never goes out, stays in at the weekend, never has parties etc. She says hi if she passes, but isn't very friendly - her partner is a bit more chatty, goes out more often etc.

Anyway, today she came up to ask me to keep the noise down. She has done this before, about a year ago, it was summer and we were having a lot of barbeques and parties with friends - nothing too late or loud, but we had people round til about 2 in the morning maybe twice a week. Our garden is beside their bedroom, so I could see how it might be annoying, but it's not like it was every night. I apologised that time.

Now she's come up to say that a. my husband wakes her up every morning at 7 because he walks too heavily across the kitchen and b. she is working from home at the moment and that it is impossible to concentrate because of the noise my children and I make.

I am at home all day with my baby twins - we go out for about 2 hours in the afternoon, but with the crap weather, we are in a lot. She says that there is nowhere in the house she can sit in peace (maybe because our house is open plan and the noise carries.) She asked me to stop dropping things (!!!) and to maybe take the babies upstairs sometimes so she could work.

I honestly think she's being unreasonable. I'm not doing anything I shouldn't do - yes, I sing and chat to my babies, maybe I drop things sometimes, but what am I supposed to do? Sit in silence and never pick anything up in case it falls?

I said I was sorry, but I don't know what else she wants me to do.

AIBU?

Ah, but the OP's family have two floors to live in, Destination - and it would be reasonable to assume that the bedrooms are on the upper floor, so maybe not sex, unless they have it regularly in the kitchen/living room.

YABU. I'd be livid if someone partied till 2AM twice a week all summer and smoked right outside my bedroom window.

Move to a ground floor property.

Your neighbour has the right to go to the environmental health dept. they can carry out tests to determine if the sound insulation between your two properties is adequate. if it is not then they can serve a notice on the freeholder to carry out works at their expense. However as an ex eho the first thing i would do would be to get you to come downstairs and listen to what she hears. if the noise was clearly audible then i would consider serving a legal notice on you requiring you to put down good quality underlay and carpets. conversions were never meant to have wooden floors between them - the impact noise problems are a nightmare. If you dont want her to go down this route then i would buy good quality underlay and carpet for the floor directly above her. carpet tiles in the kitchen.

Good lord! I don't blame her for being complaining. Surely you can make some sort of compromise for the sake of neighbourly relations?

YABU! With children and a downstairs neighbour you just cannot have wooden floor boards. They might look wonderful and feel clean but they are really terribly at transmitting noise.

Carpets is the best thing to put down, but if you don't want to put carpets down - and that is very understandable in the kitchen dining areas - you can put down cork flooring. Some of the modern cork looks really good, not like the stuff from the 70s. It doesn't absorb water (so better than wooden floor boards with spills, as water can seep through the cracks).

I lived above an old man and he never complained so I assumed he didn't hear much,how wrong was I ,I was in his house and dh was in ours the noise was terrible and thats with carpets and good underfelt.The council here don't allow upstair flats to have wooden flooring,but of course unless they come in to examione the property how do they know

YABU about the parties with people going outside until 2am, twice a week would have got on my nerves too.

YANBU about having twins and being at home doing normal family things.

YABU to have laminate on floor directly above their heads. I used to live below a family that had laminate, it was like living under a herd of elephants, you really can hear everything, it seems to magnify sounds.

If you need wipe clean flooring (a blessing with little ones, I know) then go for click cork flooring like this or get lino. Buy rugs for the living areas where no food is being eaten so that the noise is reduced, you can use runners for the most used pathways too.

If you end up having to get carpet buy a large amount of plastic table cloth material and spread liberally under dining area and get a easy clean rug for the main living area to protect carpet from the toddler spills that will be coming.

You are being unreasonable and selfish.
I don't blame the other person for complaining - it sounds (no pun intended) that she is suffering badly from your chosen lifestyle.
It is unacceptable to live with bare floorboards directly above a neighbour, which is why most landlords and authorities insist on carpets or similar.
As others have said you should go down and listen while your DH and children are running about overhead.
Get some carpets - and apologise to your neighbour.

I'm glad I don't live near you!

Another one here who thinks you are being U.

I do think carpets could help your situation. I remember in the flat we used to live in before we had the dc we heard the old lady above pee into her bedpan every morning at 7.00am lol.

Another one thinking that you are being really unreasonable. I live in an upstairs flat in a conversion and, knowing how horrible it can be being the downstairs neighbour, on the first day I knocked on downstairs' door and told them to tell us if we were being noisy so we could be more careful. We only put the washing machine one between 10am and 6pm because they're normally out then and their baby goes to bed at 7.

If I hadn't told the neighbours to tell us if the noise was a problem and they eventually cracked after a year and a half and complained I would feel terribly embarrassed rather than indignant. I really hope this is a reverse AIBU but sadly I think you probably are just an entitled bitch because unfortunately there are a lot of them around.

I can see both sides of the argument. Unfortunately all these things are part and parcel of living in a flat/divided house in most modern cities.

Perhaps you should give your neighbour some earplugs. These really do help reduce noise considerably, especially the wax ones.

I am a downstairs neighbour with twins in the upstairs flat.

I want to kill them! the constant stomping and the twins running full pelt around the house jumping on and off the furniture makes me scream "enough" through the floor.

Put carpets down, or huge rugs. don't wear shoes in the house.

When i come home from nightshift i have to time my sleeping to get to sleep after they leave for nursery, and i have 2 hours to get in to a deep sleep so they dont wake me up when they come in.

If i am working from home, the noise has me rocking in a corner. We have called enviromental health, but they have to do mediation first, and i really couldnt be bothered with it, we are either going to move before or after ttc. So hopefully will have the joy of a screaming baby to wake them up at all hours.

This is life in England. It is all down to the complete absence of anything resembling insulation.

It is really easy and not that expensive to put soundproofing insulation down between the two flats, particularly if you have floorboards.

For the sake of everyone, why do you not find out how much it would cost to put soundproofing and then maybe offer your neighbour to go halves on the cost of doing it? Life will improve radically for them, and you will not have the problem of worrying about the noise you make.

YABU

ophelia, do you seriously think the downstairs neighbour should go about with earplugs in all day?!

Come on!

If you put carpet down (and really, you should) you need good soundproofing underlay too.
I don't know how old your babies are, but carpet will be far more comfortable for them playing/crawling/walking and hoovers aren't that expensive.

One of my DC lived in a flat with a noisy (constantly running) toddler. It nearly drove her insane.

You can soundproof under the floorboards if you don't want carpets! In fact you should do it even if you do get carpets, they only give a small amount of sound reduction (lived in a flat where carpets were mandatory in the whole building, could still hear upstairs neighbours weeing).

yabu if you do not have carpets

yabu having people round til 2am twice a week coming and going outside her flat/window.

YABU!!!!

Another downstairs neighbour. You're very unreasonable not have carpet, as your noise is making a huge impact on your downstairs neighbour. Laminate actually makes the problem worse. We had an argument with upstairs and won - he has carpet and insulation on the floor directly above us and laminate for the upper floor.

Underfloor insulation is nowhere near as good as a thick underlay and carpet.

For the party, I'd have been upstairs a lot sooner if I was your neighbour! 2am TWICE a week!

Our upstairs neighbours have parties. No music, just lots of shouting and laughing. They come out to smoke - BANG - slam the door. Drunken chitchat outside our bedroom windrow. They go inside - BANG - slam the door. They think they are fab considerate neighbours.

maybe they should be more tolerant re dropping things etc but as much as they chose to live close quarters to others - so did you - you need to be more considerate also - the partying outside their bedroom window is incredibly inconsiderate and even before 2am let alone until 2am and carpets would reduce your noise impacting them.

carpets for you, ear plugs for her