Imagine living in a building where your unit is directly above another person’s unit.

If the person who lived below you kept complaining about noise coming from your unit, what would you do? Assuming you weren’t actually being loud, would you ignore the neighbor or try to find a way to appease them?

In this story, one family is in this exact situation. The older grandma who lives below them keeps complaining about noise coming from their condo and even gets the HOA involved.

Let’s read the whole story.

Entitled Grandma at my condo

I have a quick story about an entitled grandma at my old condo.

My wife and I bought a condo about 10 years ago. It was a good starter place and it helped us buy our current house.

We moved in while my wife was pregnant with our first kid, so naturally I had a lot of work to do when we first moved in. Before we even moved, painted about half the condo, cleaned the carpets, replaced 2 sinks and made some minor repairs.

This was a strange condo because most buildings had 2 story units on top and single story units on bottom.

At first, everything seemed great.

Overall, this was a nice complex and the HOA wasn’t full of demon spawn.

The HOA President was a nice woman who warned us that the insulation between the side units was pretty good but non-existent between floors. We had a 2 story unit and the EG was on the bottom.

So at first, EG was nice. She could hear me working on the condo and came up to say hi and bring me some cake because she figured I was working hard.

We had a nice talk and I told her about us having a baby and moving in.

The heat was the first problem.

She told me she had a grandson and how much we will like being parents.

After the kid was born, she would wave to our daughter, exchange small talk, etc. Normal neighbor stuff.

Well things changed that summer when we had a heat wave. My daughter was probably 3 months old at the time and this condo was HOT. For context, because of the layout, there were 2 windows upstairs (one in each bedroom), one in the dining room down stairs and a sliding glass door to the deck.

Of course, our daughters room faced due west and was in FULL sunlight. We had great, sun blocking blinds, but we couldn’t open her window until the sun went down and it was starting to get cooler outside, otherwise her room would be an oven. Even when we did this, it was 85+ degrees on a regular basis.

They had to find a way to cool down their condo.

Our HOA allowed portable AC units (with hoses to the window) but not window AC units (ones hanging out of the window). I was able to petition them to get a window AC for our bedroom because it faced a green belt so it wouldn’t be seen.

However they expressly told me no window AC units for the front of the building. So this meant the only AC unit we would get is a portable unit for the dining room.

Those 2 units with some box fans made the heat tolerable. However, there was an unintended consequence of the portable unit that made the EG loose her mind.

EG complained about the noise.

When I was at work one day, EG came knocking on the door and my wife answered. She said the AC units was making a lot of noise and keeping her grandson awake (he often stayed the night there). This was at the early evening and her grandson apparently couldn’t sleep because of the noise.

Bear in mind, this was a high end, brand new AC unit. It wasn’t loud and my wife showed it to her. She said it was over 90 degrees in out condo so we had to keep it on for the baby. She was drinking her milk but you could tell she was overheated.

Our daughter started crying so my wife excused herself and the EG left.

That wasn’t the end of it.

About an hour later, the EG came back, this time pounding on the door and yelling for my wife to turn off the AC.

My wife was dealing with our daughter and didn’t want to answer the door with someone reacting like that.

She pounded on the door for 10 minutes before giving up.

She came back a little while later and again started pounding on the doors and shouting.

My wife called me and I quickly came home to deal with this BS.

He decided to talk to the EG.

By the time I got home, it was finally cool enough to turn off the AC and open the windows. It was maybe 9pm at this point.

I go straight to the EG’s unit and knock on the door. She opens it and gives me a dead stare that basically said “What do you want?”.

I ask her, “Why are you pounding on my door and disturbing my wife and baby?”

She said that the AC was loud and keeping her grandson up.

He told the EG to call him instead of bothering his wife.

So I say “And this give you a right to pound on my door and scream at my wife? I had to leave work to come and talk to you because you are so unhinged. I don’t care what your problem is, screaming at my wife isn’t how to deal with problems”.

I then explained how the AC unit didn’t make any loud noises and I’m not sure what she is hearing (the unit was off by this time so I couldn’t head anything). I explained the extreme heat issue and how we were managing it and I gave her my cell number to call me if she has issues in the future.

She was to leave my wife alone and never pound on my door like that again.

The HOA got involved.

A few days later, we get a call from the HOA and the President went to check it out.

She was trying to remain neutral and told me I had a right to my AC but that there was a noise, but it seemed like the walls were humming. With this, the only thing I could figure was the building was crappy enough construction that the AC was causing a weird vibration that cause the wood to become harmonic.

Again, the AC unit made very little noise and had only a slight vibration from the motor.

He tried to solve the problem.

So I put my McGyver hat on and go to the hardware store. I get a foam kitchen mat, some cardboard and packing tape. I fold over the mat, put several layers of cardboard in between and tape it shut. I basically made a poor mans vibration isolation pad.

I put my AC unit on that, took a picture and sent it to EG and the HOA. I told them we would minimize the AC use but we had a right to use it and I have taken steps to mitigate the issue.

For a while, this seemed to shut down EG. However, she stopped saying hello and wouldn’t look me in the eye after that.

But EG found something else to complain about.

Over the next few months, we had no real issues until we suddenly started hearing tapping sounds on the floor.

I figured at first she was hanging something, but nope, she was hitting her ceiling with a broom. Apparently the noise was “unbearable”.

We were walking. No running, jumping, loud music or dropping stuff. Just walking.

I went down stairs and talked to her about it and told her we were just walking and she complained about how loud it was.

The HOA was on OP’s side.

She even complained to the HOA again, but they figured out it was just the building being a little squeaky in places due to age. Literally nothing we could do about it unless we ripped up the floors.

On Thanksgiving when we had a couple of friends over. Our kids were quietly playing in the living room and we were sitting at the dining room table talking. I got up to get something from the kitchen when she started rapping on the ceiling again.

I responded with a loud stomp on the floor which made her stop.

EG was never friendly to them again.

She’s the one who decided to move into a bottom floor unit of an older building.

We weren’t loud people and even we our daughter was a toddler, she was relatively quiet.

Our unit was empty for most of the time she was there before we moved in, so I guess she got used to the quiet.

After this, we barely acknowledged each other until we finally moved out a couple of years later. The woman who bought it from us was a single woman so hopefully they get along better than we did.

They can’t help it that the lady living below them hears noise in the old building they live in. It is what it is. She shouldn’t have taken it so personally.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

It wasn’t exactly a quick story.

One person thinks the grandma might have dementia.

Hitting a ceiling with a broom can really backfire!

One person got their neighbors evicted because of noise.

If you want quiet, don’t live in a downstairs apartment in an old building!

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.