Soundproofing

[Xxjj90]

We live in a link semi. This means that our house is joined by the living room and the master bedroom. The neighbours joined to us have 4 kids between teenage and 4 and are extremely loud. I have kids myself so I'm not saying kids need to be silent but there isn't a cut of time for them as they don't have a bedtime. The screaming and fighting can go on til after midnight (3 of the kids are under 9).
An old couple lived there before and we could hear them quietly playing the piano and if they sneezed but it didn't bother us at all.
We generally just use our living room on an evening to watch TV. We have another big kitchen diner with living area but don't have the TV in there as we like coming into our cosy living room on a night. We now can barely hear the TV because of the noise. I think they have laminate or wood flooring which won't be helping.

Our joined wall has two alcoves and a fireplace wall which is about 40cm from the wall and empty. Was originally going to be a wood burner so set up for this. The alcoves just have our sideboard in one and TV unit in the other.

I was thinking as a last ditch attempt to sort this we could pay someone to put some sort of sound insulation on the alcove walls then put alcove shelving and a cupboard on them. Also have the fireplace tiled.

If that doesn't work then we're moving! Has anyone done this successfully? In the joined bedroom we both have fitted wardrobes and I can hardly hear anything from them.

From my own current experience, soundproofing can help to reduce airborne noise but does very little for impact noise, unfortunately. Put it like this, our nickname for him next door is ‘Mr Slammy’… but it’s also dependent on the fabric of the houses. You could get a soundproofing expert in to advise, as it’s a lot of money to commit if it can’t do what you need it to do.

Thanks yes that's a good idea. We love this house. It has everything we need apart from the neighbours! It's the screaming and shouting which bother us most rather than slamming doors. I don't think they have carpet which really doesn't help.

I'm in the same boat so joining in the hope you get a resolution.

Spent all of Xmas looking at detached houses to try and get out of this situation

I don't expect silence or even quiet but when it comes to 11pm on a school night I want an end to the shouting and awful awful swearing. My child is left crying cause just want to sleep and they NEVER EVER STOP

It's awful isn't it Babasaclover? All the rest of our neighbours are great, keep themselves to themselves and just make a normal level of noise. We have the worst neighbours, so inconsiderate.

@JollyHam it really is. Impacts life daily. If I bc old afford to move I would but can't afford detached and think I would have a breakdown if we moved to another semi detached and experienced it again. I'm in the edge now

It's awful isn't it OP, we ended up moving from a house we loved because of this exact problem. I researched sound proofing a lot before we threw in the towel, and the problem I came up against is that you lose an awful lot of the width of the room- the gold standard is to build a separate stud wall inside the room (otherwise you don't stop the vibrations that carry the sound) and then fill it with several centimetres worth of rock wool. It's expensive, and even then there's no guarantees, as sound can still travel across the joint floors and ceilings. We were in a tiny cottage, and couldn't afford lose the space from the rooms. Also, as @AwkwardSquad mentions, you can still have issues with impact sound. I imagine a fair percentage of the sound might be travelling via the fireplace- it might be worth investigating if anyone out there has come up with a clever solution for that.
We ended up moving to get away from it, I found the stress was impacting so many aspects of our life, so I really do feel for you.