Our HOA
agreement included noise-consideration clauses. Owners were to carpet
or cover 85% of their floor to prevent noise from traveling downstairs.
The upstairs neighbor from hell had his carpeting and the underlying European fire-and-noise-proof padding torn out in the front 1/2 of his unit, and never replaced either. Instead, his subfloor was refinished to provide an ever-creaking, ever-noise-transmitting series of pine planks. It remained uncovered by the required carpeting, although we never addressed it with him through the HOA.
Cpu and I believe in the alternatives to an uncarpeted subfloor: the hardwood floor and the do-it-yourself tile floor.
The upstairs neighbor from hell had his carpeting and the underlying European fire-and-noise-proof padding torn out in the front 1/2 of his unit, and never replaced either. Instead, his subfloor was refinished to provide an ever-creaking, ever-noise-transmitting series of pine planks. It remained uncovered by the required carpeting, although we never addressed it with him through the HOA.
Cpu and I believe in the alternatives to an uncarpeted subfloor: the hardwood floor and the do-it-yourself tile floor.
Hardwood floor
Cpu and I decided to replace our carpeting in our San Francisco TIC with a hardwood floor. At the advice of Cpu's carpenter-cum-landlord uncle, we:
- Put down a supportive layer of Luan plywood over the pine subfloor planks.
- Cuts with a utility knife
- Keeps height of floor from going up a whole ton.
- Hired a truck full of Chinese workmen to install, stain, and polyurethane the oak hardwood planking.
Tile floor
We replaced our stupid kitchen floor with a DIY tile floor.
If you ever become convinced that it is time to install your own tile floor, I have a few tips for you.
If you ever become convinced that it is time to install your own tile floor, I have a few tips for you.
- Get
help. Tiling anything takes a lot of steps. You can get it done more
quickly if you can
trickbribe your co-workers and family into helping you. - Take vacation time off to do it. Start on a long weekend and take a few more vacation days. Otherwise, the project can drag on forever just like ours did.
- Have a licensed therapist ready for the fallout.
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