A Gardeners Forum Forums Members History Forum Life 2005 A difficult situation

Have you ever had one of those nieghbors?

Recently two men moved in next door and the walls are paper thin. When they first moved in, I asked if they could avoid putting their tv on the wall that we share. I was, of course, told to mind my own business.

They turn it on so loud that it is impossible to hear my tv. So I have moved my tv into the masterbed room and made that my livingroom. there are 3 walls now separating their tv from mine and still I can hear theirs over mine. I complain two days in a row to the landlord cause I just got to the end of my rope.

This morning patiently waiting until after 8 a.m. (since they work) I hung up my new curtain rods (the old one fell down). As soon as I put hammer to nail, one of them began beating on the wall and then the door and hollering for me to keep the noise down. I ignored him, it wasn't what I wanted to do, but it was much nicer than what I wanted to do.

After getting my curtains up and chatting on the forum I gathered up my gardening stuff and headed outside. He evidently had been standing by the door waiting for me and confronted me. I went straight down stairs to the landlord. Who of course blamed it all on the complex instigator.

But I gave him that look and he said he would take care of it. About that time the guy showed up so I went back upstairs and hung up the pictures I bought yesterday. They are by-the-way gorgeous. They are three pictures of a mother tiger and her cub in different poses done on mirrors and I just love them.

Then of course I just had to move the furniture around. Yes a bit of that was spite but I had also been planning on doing it for several months. Today he just gave me the motivation.

I want things to change, but as I write this I am listening to his tv again.

Aargh! I have had some neighbors that are exactly like that. They must be kin!

People who don't respect others seem to be outnumbering the ones in this world that do. I lived in an apartment complex while my children were growing up and it was one of the worst experiences in my life.

One of my next door neighbor's boyfriend used to beat on her door when she locked him out after they had a fight at 3 and 4 o'clock in the morning. I would go to the door and warn him that I was going to call the police if he didn't quit because he kept my children awake when they needed rest to go to school the next day. He would quit for awhile (until they fell back asleep) and then he would start tapping on her windows.

Another neighbor had a couple of teen-age sons that would blast "music" out of their apartment while she was gone until my ears hurt! It was an on-going problem because the woman had to go to the grocery store every week. She was very nice when I complained and managed to take care of it until the next time she had to go out.

In apartment living it is really hard to have any sense of privacy. It makes it harder when the residents don't respect others needs, also. I feel for you, Tammy! Been there, done that. I am so glad that my FH and I live in the middle of 8 acres now and do not have to share common walls with anyone. It is so peaceful and quiet out here!

Dianna

Do they play their TV loud late at night? I bet there is a volume rule in your contract somewhere...you should look to see. If it is late that they are playing the TV loudly, and your landlord is doing nothing, then call the police.

Around here, you are not allowed to do loud outside work until a certain time in the morning...I think its 8am. I wonder if your area has a rule like that? Because you waited until a decent hour to start hammering. I, being one who can't stand stupid people, would have cracked my door open and told the idiot that since he plays his tv loud at night, you have every right to hammer at your wall early in the morning. Then I would tell him that his dermis is showing...because idiots often don't know that and give a really funny reaction. <img border="0" alt="[perplexed]" title="" src="graemlins/confused.gif" />

Man, handling neighbors is a tough one! It drives me crazy when the kids around here drive by with the volume of their car stereos on mega-blast. not to mention how dangerous it is...but it always wakes Peanut up! We only have one semi close neighbor in back of us and I am trying to decide how to approach them about their yard. We have a privacy fence and they have elephant ears growing in their back yard along the (our) fence. The elephant ears are growing under the fence into our yard and it is a job keeping them cut down...but the real problem is that they are bowing the bottom of the fence and ruining it.
About the noise TK...I would keep complaining to the landlord...you know what they say about the squeaky wheel! Is there a way you could maybe hang a decorative quilt on the wall to act as a buffer?

Hello TK, I know exactly how you feel. I live in a ground floor flat.(what we call over here) I have had problems with neighbours in the past. Loud music until the early hours,partys, etc, and it really does affect you especially when you have to get up for work the next morning and they don't. It really makes me mad. Then I had a older neighbour, she was great, but she decided to move. So now I have got another idiot above me, and I think he is drug dealing although I can't prove it.

We used to live in a 2nd floor apartment. The people downstairs were pretty nice. They were usually pretty quiet...except on Saturday mornings when their 7 years old kid would run around the apartment. It was soooo hard to sleep through that....it usually started around 6 and didn't stop until at least noon. Then winter came and the kid was basically trapped in the apt. and was basically going bizerks! The only complaint I have about where we live now is that our next door neighbor husband (houses not attached) is loud and immature. He's got to be around the same age as me but when his buddies are over or siblings, he's a complete idiot. This past Saturday there was a "WAZZZUUUPPPP" at about 7 in the morning!!! :rolleyes: We live near the corner and the bus stop for the kids is there. The kids are stupid in the afternoon when they walk home. I can't wait for the summer time!!!

I can feel your pain...I've been there, done that.....

I lived in a 2 apt building for 5 years, in the bottom part......The wall were paper thin there too.

1. 1st set of neighbors...
A. Had too many people living in a small 2 bedroom apt...About 7 or 8 of them......
B. Flicked their cig butts off the porch down onto the ground in front of my entrance. I mean, could they not put them out in an ashtray?
C. Had 2 dogs that they let out front to do their business all around the apt, and they rarely cleaned it up.

I lived with my brother at the time and we had several confrontations with them.....not very pretty......

2. 2nd set of neighbors.
A. This was an older married couple, I have no complaints as they were only there 6 months but WOW they were loud in the bedroom.... Which just happened to be right above my bedroom.

At this point, my brother moved out and my husband, then boyfriend moved in with me.

3. 3rd set of neighbors & by far the hardest to tolerate.
A. Okay this was a single mom around my age. She moved in with a small baby. She didn't have a phone and would come down all the time to use my phone, which got really old. I'm a nice person, but I felt like I was a payphone.
B. She would have huge parties up there with her boyfriend. And they were so LOUD!! I'd ask them to turn down there music and it would go down a few notches for about 5 minutes, then go right back up..... And when she had a party a lot of the times her friends would block us in our driveway, or take our spots.
C. Her boyfriend took it upon himself to play the guitar sometimes at 1 or 2 in the morning.....
D. She would vaccuum at all hours of night....Sometimes after midnight....That might not seem like a big deal, but when you live in a small apt. with paper walls it's really loud.
E. They had terribly loud drunken fights......To the point where I could hear every single word that they were saying most of the time. And they could get nasty. This would happen all the time.....She'd kick him out, and then he'd come back.....
F. Their TV was wired to speakers that sat right on the floor....and let me tell you, the bass coming out of those speakers on my floor wasn't a good thing.....

The day that I moved out of there and we moved into our own house was HEAVEN....I rejoiced!!!! I said to Mark that the great thing was that if I hear someone walking around upstairs it's just him, and not some loud inconsiderate neighbors....

One thing I prided myself on was always being considerate to the other neighbors....some people just don't have it in them to be courteous I guess.....Either you are raised with manners, or you're not....

Ah gee, the stories I could tell about the assorted neighbors I have had in my travels around the world would make your hair curl. But where we live now, we have a large yard, a residential rehab place at one end of our property (beyond yelling distance!) and a funeral home close behind us, but those folks don't make any noise. At least I hope not! Upstairs are lawyers who are only here during weekday business hours. We think we inhabit a bit of paradise now.

But i guess my favorite "bad neighbor" story was the one I had on another street. Over there the cottages were built so close together that if someone sneezed indoors, everyone else from inside the other cottages would say "God Bless You!" TIGHT living quarters!

So right smack dab into the middle of this must-be-considerate mini community of cottages, moves a raving lunatic.

I hung a bird feeder in my yard and at 5 AM the next day she was outside barking like a dog to scare the birds away! I planted a garden of bulbs and when they blossomed, 10 PM one night she went and pulled them all out of the ground. She chased a neighborhood cat because it had demons.

Every day she found a reason to call the police or fire department for herself or one of us. They knew she was crazy as a loon but they had to respond whenever she called just in case one of her complaints was real. They'd come and apologetically knock on our doors and explain what the call was about....is your home on fire or is that the steam from your dryer vent? is your ex-husband back and saying sexy things out the window to her? sorry to wake you and the baby from your naps but are you being beaten up by a stranger with a beard and a bat? did you let your infant crawl out the back door,fall down the steps, get in the mud, crawl to her yard and clean himself on her laundry hanging four feet over his head? On and on it went until I took her to court.

Her elderly mother was even a bit worse. She'd go inside people's houses and collect "gifts" to give others for "blessings". No one around here locks up, so she'd just open a door and walk in. It was always interesting to see your personal knick knack on someone else's kitchen table and they'd laughingly say it was from Mrs. Varney and hand it back...everyone just sort of waited to discover the real owner if the item wasn't instantly recognized.

We were all so relieved when they finally moved out, though we pitied the new neighbors who got them!

Merme

loz, merme,

you make me feel like I should count my blessing that things aren't much worse. I guess I have been blessed to always live in a mostly military community or retiree populated community. I'm used to quiet courteous nieghbors or the ones that are so busy you never see them. I will try to be more patient and thank you for the stories I needed to hear that.

Well, while I (luckily) can't top Merme, I have had my cross-the-hall neighbor, who was obsessed with me (seriously), point a beebee gun at me as I walked out of my apartment once-I was only 19 and he was in his 50's or 60's-it was pretty scary & I ended up moving. He would knock on my door at all hours, offering food or advice or some piece of "urgent" info, corner me in the hall by the mailboxes-it was terrible.

Now, however, I don't have to worry so much about my neighbors while I'm inside, but outside is a whole different story. I live on the corner of a very busy road-the beginning to the 5 mile beach "strip" where everyone has to "cruise" with the stereos BLASTING, the motorcycles are uncountable, and the 18-wheelers like to take the scenic route. Then there's the people behind us, probably 50 feet or so-the guy whose wife doesn't like looking at our truck in our temporary driveway, who was devastated to lose her PEAK at the ocean when we put up a 6foot fence.

But anyway, my thought about your neighbors-just a thought-maybe if you did something that really bothered them, like hammering early in the morning, and you did it for a while, you could "negotiate" a truce-you'll quit hammering if they'll quit the loud TV-I dunno-just a thought. I don't talk to my neighbors all that much-I have the feeling I'm one of THOSE neighbors that we're all complaining about, what with a couple of cars in our yard, 2 screaming kids & parents-one year we even strung the xmas lights at midnight! But, speaking of cars, we don't have a real driveway, so we primarily park on the street. Seeing as there's no parking on the other, busy, street, everybody and their grandmother parks in front of my house. There's times when I have to lug groceries from 2 houses away cuz I don't have a spot-and when someone has a party, and especially on holiday weekends, forget about it-we're looking at walking from like 10 houses-trust me-with a 3 1/2 year old and a 1 1/2 year old, and all the STUFF that goes along with them, it really STINKS! But anyway, that's enough rambling-good luck tammy!

wow lol! I remember a while ago before we moved to where we are now...we had some neighbors who loved to listen to rap "music" cranked up LOUD like they had a problem hearing it! after numerous times of going over there and asking them to cut it down a tad bit and them cutting it down and then cutting it back up an idea formed in my head. I told my mom,brother,and friend that was over one day to scrounge up all the radios they could find and to bring them to me. we then put all the radios on the same country station,put the radios in the windows nearest to the people's house and cranked all of them all the way up. that honkey tonk music was LOUD!!we kept it playing for about ten minutes and then cut it off. needless to say they had got tired of our music and cut their's off and went inside...we never had another problem again lol!

Jamie, I tried that before and it didn't work for me..... Glad it worked for you though...

I was so angry one night I blasted my expensive LOUD stereo really high(after reapeted attempts at being nice).....didn't even faze them.....they just kept playing theirs loud too..... :p One time she was upstairs playing a Mariah Carey song and it was so loud I could sing along word for word.....I had the same CD and went and got it to the same spot and blasted it.....thought she'd get the point, but of course it didn't work.... :p

TK, there's no easy solution for neighbors like that, especially when you are like me and didn't want to call the cops....I mean, who knows what they would've done then...I was always worried they'd key my vehicles up or something....If talking to them, and being nice about it doesn't help then you're probably pretty much stuck until you move......it's the best feeling to be in a single family home......it was so QUIET!!!!

Well the police did come by today just to take a report. While they were there they could hear his tv right through the wall. They explained that they could talk to him today, but that nothing official would happen unless there were two complaints against him on the same day. And then he would be summoned and I would have to appear in court.

So I have decided to buy one of those small tape recorders and some tapes and keep a log. That way when I appear in court I'll have proof rather than his word against mine.

Right after the police officers left, my nieghbor and his nieghbor stood in the hall for a conference. Not to terrible bright since I could sit at the computer and hear every word. But then they are not bright.

Just alittle while ago I left my apartment and was instantly followed downstairs by the other nieghbor talking all the way and trying to pry information out of me. He followed me all around the weed patch complementing me on the flowers. Then of course he took me to the container where I had planted the cannas and told me he had over planted everything with sweet basil. I said uhhuh and went back to my apartment...followed by this guy chattering on about how his roommate would be happy to do anything for me that I need and that he is very concerned.

Concerned that they're going to end up in overnight lockup because the judge is tired of their shannanigans maybe.

Needless to say they talk to the police often for one problem or another. Lately it's been traffic accidents they have both been in one each. And the one guy just got his license back a few months ago.

If I go infront of a judge I'll have a perponderance(sp) of proof, my "i's" dotted and my "t's" crossed.

Hopefully this has de-escalated the situation and there won't be anymore trouble.

Very smart of you to keep a log of all the things that go on.....like you said that way you have proof to take in there with you.

I hope everything turns out ok. Reading all of these posts makes me like my neighbors more. Even though the girl is a meanny poo poo head. She always had a bad attitude. And she cant shut the door she has to SLAM! the door even at 2, 3, 4 in the morning.

Gdaughter.