who is being unreasonable - neighbours or us?

[rmw1016]

My OH and myself have just bought our first home. It is a terraced house . We have retired neighbours on one side who have recently started complaining about noise coming from our house which is disturbing them, examples:

• One night my OH dropped a metal dish on the kitchen floor about 11.30pm (kitchen is currently in a spare room upstairs as we are doing some work downstairs) it made an almighty clatter but lasted all of 5 seconds.

• Another night we had been out with some friends, we came home about 11.30pm and whilst our friends waited for their taxi, they went up and down the stairs to get their things out of the kitchen and we were chatting. This would have lasted 15minutes max as we were in bed by midnight.

• I dropped a glass at 10:30pm.

On all occasions, my OH has been spoken to the next morning by our neighbour claiming our noise was unacceptable and that neither of them could get a wink of sleep as a result of it. Its worth noting, the wife has severe Crohns disease so i think the lack of sleep is part of this. I think that the noise we have made is just normal living noise and is not worthy of complaining about. I want to suggest that they should get some ear plugs if its bothering them but worried this might seem insensitive.

The lady who lived here before was elderly and quiet as a mouse so i suspect its an adjustment for them but i feel like I'm having to creep around my own home and feel anxious after every night in case we are going to get told off again. I'd understand if we were screaming and shouting or playing loud music all hours but to make short bursts of noise is surely just part of living in a terraced house? Eventually we are going to turn that room into a nursery, are we going to get moaned at for a crying baby!?? They are a lovely couple and we are keen to keep things light between us, we've arranged to pop over to discuss it but everytime i think about it, i just feel more and more that they need to accept that they may hear noise from us. Any tips on how to sensitively say this?!!

TLDR - Neighbours complaining about us dropping things and having friends back, claiming this is stopping them sleeping. all incidents of noise have lasted less than 20 minutes and have been before midnight.

Blimey, when I lived in a terraced house, we had constant thumping music, and screaming kids and adults from both sides around the clock. I would have given an arm to just have a quick burst of normal chatting and stairwalking at 11.30! Your walls are obviously thin, as they are in a lot of industrial-era terraces, but that's not your fault. They need to get better insulation if they have such problems.

They need to get used to having a neighbor who isn't a quiet old lady, or they need to look into better sound proofing.

I don't feel like any of the noise that you made was unreasonable!

Wow in what universe is talking before midnight unreasonable?

then just to make things worse you have a troop of (drunk )friends run up and down the stairs whilst chatting at 11:30pm for 15 - 20 minutes that's just wrong.

Except that isn't what happened, but you go on making things up to improve your straw-man argument.

Why has everyone picked midnight as an arbitrary point before which anything goes?

Walking up and down the stairs is fine, obviously, but if it's a time at which people might conceivably be in bed, just don't fucking talk for 15 minutes as you do it.

Youre not allowed to talk in your own house at 11.30 on a friday night? Fuck that

I had a lot of grief from the downstairs flat of a badly converted building (we were the top). The neighbours complained about everything. (Closing cupboard doors to loudly ffs). They kept mentioning noise nuisance and I was getting very stressed until...
I rang the Council myself. A badly soundproofed house does NOT mean you are a nuisance. You are perfectly entitled to live your life normally. It would appear they have false expectations thanks to the previous quiet neighbour.

I would just smile and say that the noise levels from a family are bound to be different from those if a single elderly lady. Continue to be a considerate neighbour, bit live ypur life. If it persists, I'd say that THEY could consider improving the soundproofing of THEIR home. DO NOT PAY FOR THIS YOURSELF. From your OP you are doing nothing wrong.

You would really piss me off if you were my neighbours and making a noise for 20 minutes coming home with friends at 11:30 !!! How can you think that is reasonable?
Jaysus Christ woman, get a grip! On a regular basis, this would piss me off too. But as a one off ... There's a rented house near ours, with young people living there. They like to go out during the weekend and come home at around 2 or 3. Sometimes in a bit more cheerful mood and then you can hear them. Wouldn't even entertain the idea of talking to them about it, they're not destructive or anything that would require a complaint and it's not every day. What the OP is describing is some rare incidents and they really wouldn't bother me. People actually have lives and want to live them.

Dropping things is an accident, shit happens.

Friends chatting in hallway etc - you'd be surprised at how loud that seems late at night. This has happened to us, our old neighbours would come in late, chatting to other friends still in taxi, or clinking across the laminate in heels and it would only last maybe 10/15 mins, but would wake me up and that would be me awake for at least 1.5hrs. I've then got to get up at 5.30am with a baby. Not their fault I have a baby, but just irritated me about their lack of keeping quiet when coming in late.
Just try to be more considerate late at night when returning to the house.

Sorry haven't read the full thread, if you are having work done do you have carpet down yet? Running up and down stairs with no carpet can actually be really noisy. Also when friends leave do they just go? People across the road have lots of visitors and for some reason they have to have a chat on the doorstep as they leave, they shout bye from the car and then pip the horn as they drive off. Why can't they just finish their conversation inside and go? Sorry, might not be relevant to your visitors but it drives me mad.

There's a woman in my mum's road who sends a solicitors letter to her next door neighbour every time they get the hoover out That would be two letters a day when I have all the grandchildren here. I'd love to see her solicitor's bill.

demirose I am not known for my love of hoovering but if I was living next to this lady I'd hoover twice a day!

Of course dropping things is an accident
But I live in flats and my friends always leave quietly. At 11.30 they'd be whispering if I walked them to the main door (I live on an upper floor). So even communal stairs we'd whisper. Seems only fair. There's all sorts here, shift workers, people with babies. Just be decent and quiet. Not hard.

Yanbu. I live in a terrace and some noise is inevitable. Your neighbours need to understand they no longer live next door to a silent , single old lady. They should try living between my old next door neighbours who, both sides, erected trampolines right up against our garden fence. I love the privacy of my garden and really don't want to chat to their kids. One side even let their teenage son and his friends sleep out their in the summer. Thank God they moved

I'm in a semi, and the house on the other side is students. The group last year were very quiet, but this year it's a group of boys and we hear a lot of their everyday noise; TV, yelling while watching sport, ordinary talking (one of them has a normal speaking voice which is loud), even light switches on the adjoining wall. They have a communal kitchen with a tiled floor and ordinary voices there can be heard in our bedrooms. But they haven't played music loud enough for us to hear once.

It took a while to adjust to this. I decided not to say anything until they did something "unacceptable": which was a party which went on until 1:45am; again, they were not playing music, but talking very loudly in their tiled kitchen and garden, perhaps (because of alcohol) not realising just how loud it sounds our side. That evening I knocked on their door several times, and they kept saying their guests would be going home soon, but I don't think they realised just how loud their ordinary talking came through our walls. I wrote them a long note the day after telling them what we do hear regularly. I also made of point of inviting them to tell us if they hear our noise.

They didn't have a party after that, but it did often happen that we would be woken by the noise of them coming home after a night out. I decided that I would save threats of contacting their landlord/university for another party, but I do notice their everyday noise, and I did ask them to be aware of their noise when they came home late at night. And yes, it only lasts a minute or two, but it's intrusive and jerks us awake.

(We never heard noisy sex from their side though; then I might have done the trick of applauding!)

Blimey how thin are people's walls in these terraced houses ?! I lived in a terraced house till I was 18 and never heard a peep from either side. I'm glad I'm in a detached bungalow now as my kids are loud! I think your neighbours sound a bit petty tbh, I wouldn't tip toe round them. If they are that sensitive to noise there are ear plugs they can buy

Christ, this is just normal neighbourly noise! If a little bit of noise bothers you so much then I'd suggest buying a house in the middle of nowhere because that's the only way you can avoid it. People like the OP's neighbours cant expect others to live their lives in complete silence because, shock horror, the world does not revolve around them!

If you live in a city and especially a terraced house you can expect noise/sounds from people living around you.
Dropping things, aren't things they should complain about imo.
Perhaps they have a point on the friends waiting for their taxi, probably something they have to get used to though. They can't expect you to not have any friends over ever.
However, I'd try to stay on good terms with them, otherwise they'll be even more annoyed at any sounds you'll be making.

We live in a similar sounding arrangement to you. Except we are 'normally noisy' as in we just go about life doing normal things which may occasionally create noise. We don't deliberately make noise nor do we go out of our way to eliminate noise. We just live.

I have 2 DDs who are not fans of time out so may scream for 20 or so minutes at a time (been on a Triple P parenting course which says to do this method) maybe once or twice a week when they have time out. It's shit but it's also normal life. Their dog barks whenever anyone walks past. I just live with it. Dropping something is part and parcel of life. Chatting with friends is normal behaviour in your own house.

Makes me realise how lucky we are with our nice retired neighbours (70s house)