To think a great big semi or detached house must be SO lovely?!

[NeverYouMind123]

Terraced here. It's okay most of the time but I dream of living in a house with no fucking neighbour noise whatsoever. These walls are so thin I can hear the microwave next door. I dream of buying a semi detached in a few years with hallways next to each other separating the living rooms or when I'm really feeling ambitious I dream of a detached house, which must be the mother of all awesomeness. I know there is still 'area noise' but I'm not really a garden person so kids playing outside and lawnmowers etc don't phase me so much. But oh to wake up with no 'house noise' and to know I can sit in the lounge or lie in bed and have PURE SILENCE all day and not hear a dog bark or a door slam or an argument or a television. Is it as great as I think it is?

It is lovely. At the moment we're getting hardly any traffic either, so can hear birdsong most of the time we're outside in the garden.

I've lived in terraced, semi-detached and now detached and I never want to go back, even though I always had considerate neighbours.

A detached house would be just lovely but they are something of a rarity in London. The house I grew up in was a terraced victorian but in a not so nice area. You could hear the neighbours on the stairs and the adjoining bedroom . Funnily I now live in another Victorian terrace but much larger over 2000sq feet and in a ‘posh’ area. It is built so much more solidly. The walls are very thick. I don’t hear the neighbours on either side at all and one is a family.

@Designjunkie I'm definitely on for a move out of the city now-

I love our flat/location, everything pretty much on the doorstep so never really considered the 'what if it was all shut'!....

Tbh I'll be able to afford a lovely place in another part of the country, but relocating to where is now a huge decision and a massive life change- but I'd give my right arm for us to have a garden right now!

I've lived in lots of semis and always had stairs & hallways on the connected walls so that most rooms in the house were not connected. I assumed that was normal?

Nope.
That is the obvious / logical / sensible way to design a pair or semis, but it is incredibly difficult to find a pari of semis where the living space isn't connected and the halls / stairs / possibly kitchen aren't connected in my area - whatever decade, or even century the houses were built. I don't understand why. It makes no sense to me.

Our 30s semi is built living area to living area rather than Hall to hall. I think there are advantages to both designs - hall to hall means no windows in the hall, so it can be dark.

Yep it gets better. We used to experience all of that noise and walls shaking etc. Have gone from buying an ex council house which was a fantastic investment, to a terrace and now to a large detached in a rural area which we bought at a fab price because nobody wanted an acre of garden. We do feel very grateful of it at this time and we all love gardening.

I live in a semi, we don’t hear neighbours unless they’re doing DIY, however they don’t have children and we have 3 young children so no idea whether or not they hear us!
Our house isn’t big though, every terraced house I’ve lived in/visited is enormous. At least by my standards of what’s big.

I dream of this too. I grew up in a detached house in the middle of nowhere and I long for that.

I've lived in a terraces or flats my entire life.
The flat was the best in terms of not hearing other neighbours, but I suppose we might have been the noisy ones as I had a toddler at the time and the neighbours were older people. They never complained though, and in fact dd was adored and spoiled by all the neighbours in the block (a small block, in a nice area, may well be different in other places).

We now live in a terrace again as it was the biggest place we could afford to buy. It's fine. I don't need an alarm clock, next door shooting to get their kids up for school is the right time for me to get up too. We occasionally hear the kids next door shouting or being shouted at. I do wonder about them being able to hear us, but then I decide that if they've not complained it can't bother them (other than sex noises, which we do keep down because we think the room next to ours may be a kids room)

The rest of the noise we hear is the same as we would hear in a semi or a detached house as it's from the garden.

@Drivingdownthe101 genuine question, how old are your kids? I seem to be fighting an endless battle to keep our house tidy and I feel like I'm doing something wrong as it's always a tip. Without meaning to sound like a hippy type, I dont want to stifle their play by making them put one thing away before getting another out as they mix games a lot but before I know it im rushing to get them in bed and noticing everything is out all over the place! How do you manage it and balance not being an OCD neat freak?

When we moved in together we looked in a few different locations before finding this house - its 5 bedrooms and detached with a huge garden and set far back from the (already very quiet) road so everyone has their own space, everyone has peace, there's no noise from neighbours/shared walls etc. We previously lived in a mid-terrace which I loved (and our neighbours were lovely on both sides so rarely much noise) but this house is such a privilege. Even after 14 years I am still in love with sitting in the garden on days like this reading a book and hearing nothing but birds and our cats leaping about.

I live in a semi with decent walls. The fucking neighbours are still like a herd of marauding elephants. Detached is the way forward. I miss my detached house.

We lived in basement flats (converted Victorian terraces) and crummy bedsits for years before moving to a semi. First a rented one on a busy main road then bought a semi on a much quieter road.
It absolutely does make a huge difference to your quality of life to have space to get away from each other. Neighbours can still be noisy but garden means you can escape. I really feel for people living in the sort of flats we used to live in right now. No doubt the sense of claustrophobia would be affecting my mental health.

@saffragette yes we moved out of London to get a semi. Could only ever afford pretty squalid living environments in London. All the culture, job opportunities, friends etc weren't worth the compromise on our living conditions and high rental costs. I'll never regret moving out!

I live in a semi, the wall between us and our neighbour is a lot thinner than when we lived in a stone built terrace, but the neighbours are older, no children, so swings and roundabouts really.

The garden has been a godsend in all this though. DS can ride his bike, play football. Could never have done that in our tiny old garden.

@Saffagette I grew up in Wandsworth in a big wide semi, cost about 2-3m though now. I live close by in a much smaller semi & what's lovely is that if you sit in either garden it's so quiet, lots of birdsong (very near the common), not too many planes & and both roads aren't cut throughs so minimal traffic noise plus 20mph limit. I've visited friends in Surrey countryside where the traffic is much busier, faster & noisier.

The idea of living in a detached in the countryside with no neighbours is my idea of hell though! I like the comfort of neighbours.

@backforgood As you say it makes no sense, why would they do it the other way?

I'm starting to feel like I'm the only one on MN who lives in a city flat with kids....

I also feel like screaming at people who seem to live in such comfort and still find something to complain about....

Maybe this thread isnt good reading for me!

Your flat could be bigger than my house. I am not feeling too depressed reading this thread though. I will appreciate my bigger house so much when I finally get to live in it.

@SilAnCroix - true...I'm very much missing a garden right now though and access to immediate outdoor space (all the parks and play areas we usually go to are cordoned off....).

I'm not going to go on a rant about the communal areas and access whilst trying to socially distance with a 1&2 year old but it's been near impossible (I've become a peeper just on 'right timing' it to take us for a walk).

Having a delivery driver impatiently waiting at the top of the stairs while I was up&downing it with a double buggy and 2 little ones last week was a nightmare, he looked like he was going to implode!

It's just stress I never expected, with some added guilt for my Dds, especially now the suns out....

Anyhoo.....

2 little ones, a lockdown and a first floor flat

Grew up in a detached house - very quite
Now live in a terraced house in a major city, which I much prefer as I love the hustle and bustle around me

Fingers crossed you find a well off man one day and are able to get that home of your dreams

We lived in a small terraced house with a postage stamp sized garden on an estate with noisy and intrusive neighbours for 15 years and managed to up grade to a semi bungalow at the end of last year. It’s a wider plot than usual and has space for the caravan on the side of property. It’s a doer upper so not only do we not get bored because we still have loads of jobs to do but we are really really thankful for the lovely southerly garden we now have. Don’t get me wrong we still hear dogs and traffic but this is amazing compared to what we had as we now have a trampoline for daughter, a large splash pool (going up shortly) and a good sized rotary clothes line (I know this is sad but it’s a big deal when you’ve been able to dry clothes easily for such a long time!) and we have a good sized tree with birds nesting in it.... so thankful For what I have now and I think of all those in a flat / with postage stamp sized gardens

I live in a terraced house. Our sitting rooms adjoin, as do our main bedrooms, but there is virtually no noise from our neighbours because it is a 1930's house and is very sturdily built.

I think perhaps some of the people experiencing a high degree of noise from adjoining properties are living in relatively modern terraced houses, which I suspect are built more quickly and more cheaply than in the past.

We're in a 1930s semi. Solidly built. We wouldn't hear any noise from our neighbours if they weren't so loud. The dad doesn't seem to have a volume control and his son is almost as bad. It's made worse by the fact they have knocked their dining room and kitchen into one so it's a bigger more echoey space.

I used to in a ground floor flat with hardly any soundproofing and noisy neighbours...and noise at night and it was really awful. I had noise from 3 flats above me. Thankfully I've moved to a top floor flat and quiet neighbours now although you still hear some noise but a detached house would be heaven!