to put a note through their door? Wwyd?

[adulthumanfemail]

Hello, we've got new neighbours again...

Next door is let and we own. Last year's tenants were fine but one of them played the piano all the damn time and was always the same tune over and over again. Whilst this was very very annoying, I figured they were learning and practising. These tenants have now been replaced with some really annoying, plain noisy people.

I have an 8 month old baby and his room is next to their daughter's room. In the evenings they are really loud. Is it bad to put a note through their door? Or should I try and speak to the landlord instead? I don't want yet another year of putting up with someone else's noise all the bloody time.

My neoghbours are loud. Never music, bit really inconsiderate stuff life a power drill at 11pm and yelling matches at 3am.

I have never had the courage to say anything - I am just frosty with hem so the probably think I am stuck up. I banged the wall once when he started sign8ng at the top of his lungs at 4 bloody am.

So I totally understand that it is hard to speak to people, I have been seething with no action for years!!!

We live next to a homeless welfare house, so anyone can be put in this property when they are in desperate need of one and awaiting another property to be ready.
Generally the tenants they put in are families that are similar to ours and you hear sibling arguments etc.

Occasionally we get the opposite - children banging on the walls until 3am, cupboard doors banging as they've decided to cook a curry, stew etc at 2-3am, parties on a weekday, heard a girl screaming & what sounded like her being thrown against walls (police & homeless welfare called immediately on that occasion) amongst other things.

We put up with it for a while as thought they're probably hearing us too with the thinness of the walls but when we had gone weeks with only 3-4 hours sleep and working the next day, I complained to the homeless welfare about it.

We had attempted on a few occasions to speak to the various tenants but got swore at most of the time, so we were advised to make any comments to homeless welfare.

What I'm trying to say is, it can get you down hearing noise that you don't feel is acceptable. However, what is unreasonable for one person isn't unreasonable for another as this post clearly shows, but if it genuinely is upsetting you attempt to make contact, even if it's like others have suggested as a 'hi, I'm your neighbour....etc etc". It may be that they don't know that you can hear these things and they could potentially dry their hair in a different area of the house to be considerate to you with your new baby, in the same way that you would prob do things when your little one gets older. My circumstances are different with our direct neighbours so we couldn't do this but the neighbours on our other side we have built good relationships with and we will speak up if we have problems. There is nothing to say that this can't happen with you, and if they are rude to you, the next step could be talking to their estate agent.

Poor OP, people are really piling on, for some reason...

I can completely understand not wanting to talk to them face-to-face. Not everyone finds it so simple and easy to just pop next door and ask the neighbors to pipe down. It's awkward and you never know how someone will react!

Personally, I don't see the problem of a polite note under the door-- though it's probably true that any attempt at anonymity will fail.

Good luck, whatever you decide to do or not do, and I hope you'll be able to find a quieter place in the near future! (Or at least have nice, quiet neighbors.)

Neighbours, everybody needs good neighbours. With a little understanding you can find the perfect blend.
Neighbours should be there for one another. That's when good neighbours become good friends.

There's no indication in anything the OP says that they're likely to react aggressively.

How do you know its a hair dryer OP ? Also, I could often hear our NDNs TV at our previous place. Its pretty common. One of the inconveniences of staying in semi-detached.

@AnnieAnoniMouse seriously?

I would say talk to them. Maybe ask if they can hear you. Try and stay civil, as your 8 month old may become the noisy one a few months or years down the line!

Next door is let and we own.

As a long time renter who now owns, this is really a shit attitude to have op. It implies you believe you somehow have a greater right to dictate what is or isn't ok. You really don't. It's irrelevant. Anonymous notes are not only also demonstrative of a shit attitude, they're hardly likely to sustain your anonymity if the receivers have any skills of deduction to speak of.

If you can hear normal day to day noise (hairdryers, conversations, TV etc) it's a problem with the insulation of your building, not the actions of your neighbours. Perhaps the Edwardians weren't quite so hot on that? You seem to have acknowledged the unreasonableness of this. This type of noise irritates me too. Having had Edwardian / Victorian / Georgian period homes before, I now live in property built sometime in the '50s. I rarely hear any sounds at all from my neighbours, something to consider for your future moving plans perhaps.

Re the white noise, why not keep it on all night? What's the problem if it helps your DC? Both mine have it all night long. It helps muffle any noises we make in the bathroom etc or from the TV. In our days of living in a noisy city centre period conversion block it was a godsend and we've kept it up from then.

If your home is silent from 6pm that is highly unusual. I would start thinking out some strategies for when your DC becomes a toddler if noise bothers you to that extent.

Come to think of it, current NDN have a baby which cries a lot throughout the day. To the point where I feel like knocking and asking them if he/she is unwell or hurt. On some days it is relentless. This really disturbs me as I work from home in the daytime. Perhaps I should let them know....?

We live in a terrace. Nextdoor on one side has been converted into 4 flats. Often house young professionals or students.

The one flat has a kitchen living room which is next to our bedroom. The walls are fairly thick.

We had a new, noisy neighbour move in (young male student).

Nothing untoward, but he liked watching TV late, VERY loudly.

First time, we ignored. May be a one off. Second time, I knocked - he didn't answer, but another flat resident did (coincidentally, the nice lady who had her daughter two days before my son). I apologized that I woke her and she said now tries, he was mousey, but their bedroom is at the back so didn't affect them. She let me in. I knocked on his door. He had the volume cranked so high he could barely hear me.

When he opened the door he looked surprised (it was gone 11pm and I was in a dressing gown with mum bun in place) I said hi, we love next door. That we have a 6 week old baby and our bedroom was the room next door. He was very, very apologetic.

No loud noises since, certainly not after 10pm.

Some people are clueless. A polite chat helps. If that doesn't work time to start logging issues. Especially between 11pm and 7am. And flag with environmental health at your council.

BTW, no issue with renters - just context for the age and experience of our neighbours. Sometime find students don't realise how much can be heard by their neighbours (I didn't). I also think it hadn't occured to this young gentleman that there may be a bedroom next door.

Apologies for typos/ autocorrect weirdness. Typing one handed whilst nursing. Really wish Mumsnet allowed you to edit!

Well you say yourself that your a massive cowardly scaredy-cat who doesn't want face-to-face confrontation. I must say that judging from your reply's to quite reasonable responses that being rude and judgmental whilst anonymous seems to be your thing so I'm guessing they will be receiving a note under the door any day now.

“Having had Edwardian / Victorian / Georgian period homes before, I now live in property built sometime in the '50s. I rarely hear any sounds at all from my neighbours, something to consider for your future moving plans perhaps.”

There’s no hard and fast rule on that front I’m afraid. I’ve lived in a 1950s property where I could hear everything (and I mean everything) from the neighbours adjoining. Same with a Victorian terrace. Now I’m in an Edwardian property and it’s pretty much silent, despite the main rooms adjoining. There’s a big family living next door so I’m fairly certain they’re not tiptoeing around either.

You're having a strop about them using a hairdryer at 10pm? You are the unreasonable one here, they sound like perfectly normal people living completely normal lives.

That was the longest flounce ever

5 pages in and nobody even called you out on the "and they're not English" remark yet?

WOW.

I feel sorry for the neighbours, tbh. They're making normal, everyday noise at reasonable times and OP wants to send anonymous notes, etc.

I'm pretty noise sensitive, but live in a 30's semi where, when it's quiet, I can hear every word of the conversation my NDNs are having. I can hear a loud "click" every time they plug something in to sockets on the party wall (which, for some reason, is the noise I find most irritating). I can hear their bog flushing and filling, their tumble drier running, their washing machine and the extractor fan on their cooker hood.

On over 25 years, only once have I found it necessary to say something about noise, and that was when their teenage son repeatedly played music so loud through speakers on the party wall that stuff fell off the shelf in my spare room. I endured the phase of target practice with a noise air rifle in the garden, the kids bouncing a football on the pavement repeatedly for hours on end, and tolerate Mr NDN bellowing at the racing on tv at the top of his voice any afternoon there's racing on.

I daresay they tolerate us loudly berating lying politicians on tv, having (brief) conversations from opposite ends of the house, DP starting his motorbike at 7.40 on weekdays and us shouting at MotoGP on alternate weekends from March-November.

Other people's noise is something we all have to endure, unless we're lucky enough to live in a detached house or live next door to people who are unusually quiet.

If your house is 'silent' after 6pm no wonder you hear every noise they make.

I missed the "not English" bit.

Am still tickled that someone with a young baby thinks they aren't driving the neighbours up the fucking wall.

I live (rented) in an apartment block with 20 other families. Every time a flat is empty we all dance round naked at midnight doing black magic so we don't get a family with a baby. not really

My noisy neighbours had a baby! No more yelling at silly o’clock and no more loud sex sessions. Can occassionally hear the baby cry - but it doesn’t bother me at all. Can’t be helped and it’s a lot more stressful for them than me!!!

We lived in an Edwardian terrace and we had the same problem. For us the chimney side was better and we heard less on that side and it was tolerable, but the staircase side was awful at times. Music in the kitchen was the thing that carried most and rows. It seemed a bit random as well - we would hear occasional things really clearly, a hoover, a conversation or a hairdryer and it would sound like it was in our house, but we didn't hear hoovering again (maybe they were just not regular hooverers).
It was odd as well because different tenants were totally different in what we could hear. So a man who lived by himself we never heard once. A woman with a daughter we never heard apart from the time she had an Ann Summer's party. A woman who lived by herself we heard really clearly -to the point DH thought it was me playing music in the kitchen one day, a woman with two small children we heard her but never the children.
We just learned to live with it. Once we stopped being stressed by it we were less aware of it. We wondered what they heard of us.
On the whole it was just living noise, not unreasonable - apart from the alcoholic drug addict who beat up his wife and terrified his two small children and banged on our walls shouting abuse when we kept calling the police.
We investigated soundproofing but anything worth doing was really expensive and then we just forgot about it.
We did talk to one neighbour and she was lovely and stopped playing very loud music.
It can be very stressful but I think we make it more stressful than it actually is by our reaction- unless they are drilling walls all night with a power drill.

@adulthumanfemail trying hair at 9oclock is perfectly normal ? The walls deffinatly are thin if you can hear a hair dryer ? I was dry my hair around 10pm and that's when I have a shower. I think your being petty. If it's normal family noise then I don't see your problem especially before 10. Fair enough if there was constant shouting/screaming through the night