The Crippling Blizzard of '16

NY, your description of DC sounds like the Boston area last winter. We were just lucky because where we live has a lot less population density than the suburbs closer to the city, hence, more places to put snow. One of our drives into Boston for our theatre subscription night last February or March was just horrific because of unplowed lanes. I can't even describe what I saw in Boston.
We are very lucky with the new condo, in terms of noise. No one above us, just 2 sides. We were there this morning, doing work, and i commented that it seems dead. Since this was DH's main concern about multi unit housing, he is happy, but I am sure we will be the ones going in and out the most, especially since we are still working. Others are, too, but they all seem to stay home a lot!

There's not much I can do about people upstairs, but I do hear some sound from downstairs and I am looking into something to improve that situation. My next project will be to replace the old wall-to-wall carpet and with new floors and I was about to move ahead with installation of a hardwood floor. Then one day I realized I was tired of listening to the crying baby downstairs, and tired of being woken up by the vibrations when they run up the stairs from their basement to their main floor early in the morning. So I'm looking into cork floors now. I started the online research last week and went to a few stores yesterday. There aren't as many color choices so I will probably end up with something a bit darker than I had originally chosen for the hardwood floor. And I know it won't completely solve the noise problems. But it should help, and it should also be warmer for my cold feet in the winter.

One good thing is that I don't have noise problems from the people on either side of me. I can only hear sounds from one of them if there's lots of noise in their kitchen, like people talking very loudly, and that rarely happens. From the townhouse on the other side I can hear one of the dogs barking, but it's a well-trained dog so it's not much of a problem, and I don't hear any other sounds.

The flooring stores I went to yesterday were in the suburbs just northwest of DC. The area where I live got about 20" of snow, while the suburbs north and west got 30ish inches. The area I was in yesterday wasn't in the hardest-hit area but they definitely had bigger snow piles than we have here. The manager at one of the stores told me that the county was piling lots of snow in a lot down the road from his store, giant piles, like 30 feet high. He mentioned that when it melts it will run off into Rock Creek which runs through a big park in DC, and it won't be clean water so not good for the environment. That's another side to snow and ice in our area -- tons of salt ends up in the rivers and eventually in the Chesapeake Bay.

NY - Is moving to a new place an option? It seems like the entire situation (snow, noise from above, trash, smells, condo management and snow removal, etc.) is making you pretty unhappy, and I fear there's only so much you can do from inside your unit.

For the unit above you, you might want to look into noise ordinances (and condo rules) to see if there's anything that's required. If there is, find the owner through the management company or tax records or property records and send them a letter. Otherwise, the new tenant will probably just find a note when they move in. As far as your floor, I wonder whether there is a natural equivalent of a padded laminate. That would probably insulate from noise fairly well.

Unfortunately no, moving is not an option. I own this condo and can't afford to sell it, nor can I afford anything better in this area. The real estate market is still not good for one bedroom condos in this area. This is also the reason I am surrounded by renters. I am doing what I can to make it pleasant on the inside and I do like the improvements that I've made so far. And I'm looking into other things like an air purifier that can be installed as part of the HVAC system.

I lived in very good apartments in Chicago and Manhattan -- solid pre-war buildings where you barely knew the neighbors existed. But on the other hand I hated the weather in Chicago and there were roaches in my building in NYC -- there's always something. The places I've lived in the DC area have not been nearly as solid -- I don't know if it's because the building quality is worse here overall or if I've just had bad luck. Whatever it is, I just don't have the money to go anywhere else.

One thing I do know -- I will like my home a lot more when the big pink flowers bloom on the tree across the courtyard in the spring. :)

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Originally Posted by Blueberry

As far as your floor, I wonder whether there is a natural equivalent of a padded laminate. That would probably insulate from noise fairly well.

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We have cork flooring in our downstairs and love, love, love it.

It's a superb insulator for both sound and temperature. As far as humidity, it behaves more like hardwood (the space was carpeted when we moved in, and when we tore the carpet out and replaced it with the cork, the humidity dropped by 10 percentage points without making any other changes!). It's just beautiful, and comes in a variety of colors and patterns, both natural and dyed. It hides dings and doesn't stain. Ours is a floating floor, so it isn't suitable for wet spaces, but sealed cork is available. It wasn't cheap, but it's comparable to hardwood, less expensive than some woods.

Oh, and it's super durable. That was a concern of ours, and one of the things that really sold us on it was that the flooring display store had cork in their highest traffic areas. Where we have ours doesn't get a lot of traffic, but it's been there I think seven or eight years and looks new. My hairstylist has cork floor in her salon, and that DOES get a lot of traffic, including being swept after every haircut, and after several years it hardly shows any wear at all.

My favorite story about our cork flooring - soon after we installed it, we were replacing our picture tube TV and set it on a window bench. It was a smaller TV, but being a picture tube TV, still at least 50#. When the cushion compressed, the TV fell about a foot and a half onto the floor, right onto a corner of its cabinet. You have to look hard to see the ding in the floor, even though it's maybe 2" in diameter. If we tell the story to someone who doesn't know where the hole is, we have to show them where it is, they can't find it. Best part? The TV still worked after it fell onto the cork-cushioned floor. :cool:

Oak, thank you so much for your post. I had seen something in an old thread about your having cork floors and I was going to ask you how they had held up.

The rooms that will get the new flooring are the living/dining room, bedroom and hallway in between. There is a closet next to the hallway with the washing machine and dryer, so theoretically there could be water damage from the washer in that area, but otherwise I don't have to worry about wet spaces. I had a little trouble at first finding flooring stores that carry a decent selection of cork, but now I've found 3, possibly a fourth, and two have a really good selection of several different brands.

I would like something that comes in planks rather than tiles because that seems more "floor like" to me. The tough part is finding the right color -- ideally I'd like a medium brown, not too light or too dark, with no red undertones. From the cork samples I've seen so far, I think I will end up with something that is a bit lighter or darker than what I had in mind because so far all the medium browns I've seen are pretty red. But even if I end up lighter or darker than originally planned, I think I will be able to find a color that I'm happy with.

Oh and incidentally there now is a "For Sale" sign in front of my building, so I'm assuming the unit upstairs is for sale. I haven't been able to find a listing online for it yet. The crazy person in me wants to call the realtor to say that if either the buyer or seller has plans to replace the hardwood floor, I would like to pay for a soundproofing layer underneath. The current floor was refinished less than 10 years ago, so most likely there won't be any changes made to it, but I would kick myself if they did rip up the floors and I was not able to take advantage of the opportunity. Anyway, right now I am crossing my fingers that the new owner is a reasonable person who understands apartment living.

And here's a happy story from the big storm, as we continue to deal with icy sidewalks where people fall and hurt themselves... someone I work with had planned a trip to southern California the same weekend as the storm. Her flight out of town was the night before it hit. Her return flight was cancelled due to the weather, so she ended up staying a couple of extra days at a very nice hotel with very nice weather. Yes it cost her a bit more but she does not regret it because she had a great time. Meanwhile her college-age daughter was back home the whole time, and their neighbor helped shovel her out and made sure she was okay despite the bad weather.