Living above someone else comes with a certain amount of unavoidable noise.

So when one condo owner found himself constantly blamed by a downstairs neighbor for everyday sounds like walking or watching movies, the situation slowly escalated into a renovation with a little extra impact.

Keep reading for the full story!

Entitled Neighbor complains about our noise, ends up losing $8,000 dollars

Sometime around 2002 my wife and I moved into an 1100 sq ft condominium with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths.

We were very fortunate to get this condominium as a second owner, and we paid only $114,000 (6 grand more than the original price).

He describes the layout and finishings of the unit.

Our condo was on the third floor, and ALL rooms were carpeted throughout the condo with only one small 4′ x 4′ square of linoleum inside the front door to the outside breezeway (this will become important later).

And yes, even the bathrooms, kitchen, and dining room were carpeted.

The front door opened to a large open space with vaulted ceilings, with the great room to the left and the dining room and kitchen to the right.

The kitchen area was separated from the great room with a wall that had a cutout over the kitchen sink, and we had a long hallway directly going out of the great room to all the bedrooms and straight in front of the front door.

He proceeds to describe their neighbors.

We got to know some of the neighbors and got along well with most of them.

The neighbors directly below us were a young couple that were attending university and were nice and cordial with us.

Shortly after they graduated, they rented out their condo to her brother and his college friends.

This is where things started to get a little noisy,

The brother was a decent guy, and we mostly had no problems except for one of his birthdays where their music and boisterous conversations and “Happy Birthday!” etc. kept us up until 4:30 AM.

My wife and I returned the favor by blasting our music the very next morning at 8:00 AM.

But we talked a couple of weeks later and all had a laugh about it and never had any real problems after that.

Soon enough, the couple started making some changes to their unit.

Between 2004 and 2006 we changed all the flooring in the kitchen and dining room to ceramic tile (including the area in front of the front door).

This was to avoid having to pay for carpet cleaning in the dining or kitchen area due to spills or our young daughter throwing food on the floor from her high chair.

In 2007 our cordial neighbors sold their condo to an older newlywed couple (late 20s to early 30s).

Their positioning left them in a pretty unfortunate spot.

Now if anyone has lived between a first and a third floor condo or apartment, you will know that it is the WORST place to be if you expect silence.

With kids or music you will always have some noise that filters through the floor or ceiling.

I don’t know WHAT they were thinking or expecting when they moved in there.

The condo owner tried to get on with his evening as usual.

I was blissfully unaware that the condo had been sold until one day about a month later I brought home a powered subwoofer and hooked it up to my home theater sound system (around 6 PM).

I promptly put on an action flick with some big explosions and sat down to enjoy the new and improved immersive sound.

After a little bit of gunfire and two explosions I hear the doorbell “ding dong.”

Then he hears someone at the door.

I get up and immediately hear “ding dong” again.

I walk the five feet to my front door and open it to see my entitled neighbor (I’ll call her Karen) standing on my doorstep.

Me: “Hi. Can I help you?”

This Karen wasn’t pleased.

Very agitated Karen: “My husband and I are TRYING to enjoy a QUIET and peaceful dinner. Can you PLEASE turn down whatever show you are watching? We can hear everything that’s going on!”

Me: “Oh, uhhh… sure. Sorry about that!”

She turned around and walked away.

I closed the door, turned the subwoofer down a ways and the main volume down a bit, and thought nothing of it.

That wasn’t the end of it, though.

Shortly after the next round of gunfire and explosions I hear the “ding dong” and then some rapid-fire knocking at my door.

I paused my movie and then opened the door to see Karen again.

Me: “Uhhh. Hi. What can I do for you?”

Karen: “We can STILL hear everything from your show! You need to turn it down now!”

At this point I was a little fed up with her crap and decided to call her on it.

Me: “You say you can hear everything. Can you give me some of the last dialogue you heard?”

She immediately fails this quiz.

Karen: “I DON’T KNOW! I just know you are watching XXXX show.” (she was TOTALLY wrong)

Me: “No. I am actually watching YYYY movie, and here are the last three lines of dialogue…”

And I gave her those lines.

Me: “It seems you can’t hear my movie as well as you are claiming.”

This only makes the Karen madder.

Karen: (with blazing eyes and red in the face) “I DON’T CARE! It’s TOO LOUD! You need to turn it down!”

Me: “Actually noise ordinance says I DON’T have to turn it down until 10 PM.”

Karen: (getting huffy) “FINE! I guess my husband and I will have to go OUT to eat to get some peace and quiet!”

Me: (in my most cheerful voice and waving) “Have a good night!”

Now this condo owner is just plain ticked off.

I then turned my subwoofer up a little and the main volume back up to its previous level and enjoyed the rest of my movie.

The neighbors did end up going out that night for dinner or whatever.

Turns out, Karen is prepared to escalate her concerns as far as they will go.

At our next HOA meeting Karen stands up and complains long and loud about the noise.

How she can hear kids jumping on the *carpeted* floor (we had a 4-year-old) and crying (we had a new baby).

She said she could hear us walking up and down our hallway and hear our music and movies and TV shows.

She makes a list of complaints about other neighbors too.

She also complained that the Hispanic neighbors on the first floor played their music on Saturday mornings so loud they couldn’t sleep in and argued so loud she could hear every word.

This went on for six months.

The HOA tried to reason with Karen, but nothing would get through to her.

EVERY TIME she complained the HOA told her, “If it’s between the hours of 8 AM–10 PM, we can do nothing. If it’s after 10 PM and before 8 AM, you can call the police.”

Then the HOA would send out a letter by U.S. mail asking everyone to be cognizant of their neighbors and laying out the local city noise ordinance.

I finally stopped attending the HOA meetings after month three of the same bullcrap.

Karen continued harrassing him through passive aggressive encounters.

She never failed to visit at least once or twice in the week after these notices, and twice she taped them to my door.

I also learned during this time that they were members of our church and had actually been assigned to visit us each month (they never did).

So finally, this condo owner decided to start fighting back.

Cue the pro revenge.

Around the six-to-seven month mark of her constant complaints and harassment, and even a couple of visits from some VERY apologetic police officers after 11 PM at night (they said they could hear NOTHING outside of my condo door), we decided to upgrade our flooring.

They knew full well the consequences of this, but at this point, they didn’t care.

We knew this would inflame our entitled neighbor, but we didn’t care as we were tired of the constant stream of complaints from them.

We chose to extend the entry tile all the way from the front door, down the long hallway to the master bedroom door.

We also wanted to tile the bathrooms.

We also went with a light coffee-colored bamboo hardwood in our great room.

Making these changes wasn’t going to be a quiet ordeal.

Sooooo… demolition first.

We tore out the carpet and tack strips and pried the base-molding trim off the walls.

As I’m removing the last of the nails from the walls and subfloor (about noon on a Saturday), wouldn’t you know it… BANG! BANG! BANG! from the front door.

You can guess who was on the other side of it.

Me: “Yes?”

Karen: “Can you keep it down? I’m trying to have a Pampered Chef party!”

Me: “Sure.”

The condo owner continues to be three times as loud now.

I promptly finished pulling or driving in nails and then proceeded to bang my hammer all over the subflooring like I was driving LOADS of new nails for the next hour.

I also made sure to turn on my stereo to the local hard rock station and turn it up for the next four hours.

The cacophony of noise roared on louder than ever before.

FYI the first-floor neighbors were already blaring some GREAT Mariachi music.

They did this every Saturday and Sunday as they cleaned their condo from top to bottom.

We then rented a hardwood floor nailer that, in addition to compressor noise and LOUDLY driving a nail into the flooring and subfloor, also had to be struck with a large dead-blow hammer.

BANG!… BANG!… BANG!

It took us two to three days to install the coffee-colored bamboo hardwood flooring in the great room, and we were SURE it was driving Karen absolutely BATTY.

By the end of it, the unit was looking great.

We ended up installing an AWESOME tile inlay down the hall.

We had tile running from the front door to the master bedroom door along the great room side of the divider wall.

We also installed tile in the dining room, kitchen, and both bathrooms.

We got the base molding on (more nail gun and compressor fun) and caulked.

The new floors looked amazing.

There was another unexpected benefit to it too.

The bonus was that every time a hard shoe (like my daughter’s favorite Sunday shoes she wore EVERYWHERE, EVERY DAY) or high heel (my wife chose to learn how to do everything in 4-6 inch stilettos during this time) struck the floor, it echoed through our perfect floors.

All this was due to our neighbor complaining.

So when it came time to sell, their renovations really paid off.

It was also in preparation to sell our condo, as we had grown out of it by this time.

We sold it within one month of listing at $160,000.

During closing the real estate agent for the new owners told us that the floors absolutely sold the place.

We also sold at the very top of the real estate boom right before the real estate market crashed.

The terrible Karen neighbor didn’t last too much longer either.

We later learned from some of our neighbors that within nine months of our selling our condo, the second-floor entitled neighbors moved out.

They sold their condo for $30,000 less than we had (and took about an $8,000 LOSS).

They also sent a letter of complaint to the HOA stating their condo was unlivable because of the noise from our incredible floors. 😉

If this Karen would have been nicer, perhaps this condo owner would have been a little more sympathetic.

What did Reddit think?

This commenter thinks the condo owner was way out of line here.

This user doesn’t think subwoofers should be owned by anyone living in a shared space.

This post put this commenter off condo living altogether.

When someone complains about every sound, sometimes the best response is to let the floors do the talking.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.