Noise: Making It and/or Dealing with It

By Bill Primavera

 Never have I been, nor could I be, a noisy person. Or could I be?

I’ll always remember the surprise of once driving onto my property where I was to meet my trusty painter to discuss the job of repainting some of my interior spaces. I was a little late, so I jumped out of my car without turning off the motor or radio to unlock the place. My painter, who had worked for me for a long time, looked at me askance and said, “Knowing the kind of man you are, I never would have thought you’d play loud music in your car!” I guess I was busted.

Yes, I like loud music, whether in my car or at home. Not rock or country, but Broadway show tunes that get my heart pumping. And it doesn’t do the trick for me with earphones. The sound has to fill the room I’m in and reverberate off the walls to fully embrace me.

For more than 40 years, I lived on a property with no homes near me, but now that I’m living in a condo with neighbors across and down the hall, I guess my reverberating days are over if I’m to be a considerate neighbor. Just last week, a woman across the hall asked if the piano playing she heard was coming from my unit. Oh, no, I thought! I’m only able to play the American Songbook, and I am so rusty after a 30-year absence from the keyboard that I’m sure Cole Porter and Richard Rodgers are rolling over in their graves.

Sheepishly, I admitted I was tinkering on the keys and apologized that I’m not a more accomplished musician. Since that time, I haven’t been playing much and have been using the soft pedal when I do.

Most of us who live in Westchester or Putnam have some kind of proximity to a neighbor who is subject to noise we make as we share property lines or walls of apartments or condominiums. That can create problems, sometimes big ones.

When I moved into my first apartment in the city, it was new, cheap construction and the floor above me had no carpeting. Living there was a single mother who must have worn spiked heels every waking moment and had a child who could only have been possessed by a demon.

In the days before cell phones and when everyone had no fear of being listed, I looked up her number and called her so frequently to complain about the noise that I can still remember her name and exchange (from the days we had exchanges and numbers were easier to remember). Then, one day, her tough boyfriend came banging on my door, which I refused to open, calling me names, the least offensive of which was “a neurotic,” threatening me serious bodily harm. That’s when I decided to skip out on my lease and leave the building for a more solid “pre-war” building with better insulation from sound.

When my wife and I married and shared our first apartment in another new building, there was an older gentleman who lived in the apartment right off the lobby who loved to share his life with the building’s other residents. He must have been involved with entertainment in the 1950s, because he would leave his door open and sing songs of that period without accompaniment. Only in New York, right? His favorite was “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation.” Whenever my wife and I want to refer to the intrusion of one person’s lifestyle, aka “noise,” into another’s, all we have to do is sing that song as code and it speaks volumes.

When we moved to the country, the vagaries of close proximity were lessened for sensitive ears and far different. There is the noise of lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and the biggest offender about which most of us complain, barking dogs, especially if they bark too long unabated. Most towns have in their codes the acceptable length of time an owner can have a dog bark before a neighbor can ask that a warning be issued by the code enforcement officer.

For those of us who share condo or apartment walls, we have the same issues that those in the city have. I recently discussed this subject with a single male friend who told me that he shares walls on either side of his condo unit with other retired people.

“I know most things about their lifestyles,” he said, “like when the nice woman on one side of me can’t sleep and I hear her TV go on in the middle of the night. We just adjust.”

Sometimes it’s a matter of luck or circumstances. A former neighbor in the condo across the hall from my top floor unit had asked me if I hear a noisy motor on the roof as he does. I don’t. He also indicated that he heard loud music until 11 p.m. and can’t determine its source, while my unit is usually like a tomb. But, you never know.

I keep a pair of earplugs in the drawer of my night table, just to be on the safe side.

Bill Primavera, while a publicist and journalist, is also a Realtor® associated with William Raveis Real Estate and Founder of Primavera Public Relations, Inc. (www.PrimaveraPR.com). To engage the services of The Home Guru to market your home for sale, call (914) 522-2076

Examiner Media

Examiner Media – Keeping you informed with professionally-reported local news, features, and sports coverage.