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This seems to be a place to vent, so I will do. My situation is a bit different. I live upstairs with my wife. We have a young couple that lives downstairs. We own our condo and so do they. We had our first incident about a year ago when our painters spilled a bit of paint in our balcony and onto theirs. The guy came upstairs not even saying hello first and began to say we were irresponsible and so forth. I cut him off and explained that we had contractors and had no idea what happened. I apologized, offered to pay for any damaged items and paid for the painting of his entire balcony which made it look better. I also gave them a nice bottle of wine for the inconvenience. We observe all noise rules and have had two parties on a Saturday in which we warned them about. No one complained and our parties were over by midnight.

The other day I had to wake up at 5AM. I decided to not rely on foreign oil so much and bike to work. At those hours, I tip-toed around so to not wake my wife. I got everything ready and unfortunately, my backpack fell from the chair. Oh well, no biggie. As I am walking down the stairs slowly, I hear a door open and then, "Fuck that was loud! That shit resonates down here..." It was my - oh how should I put this - uneducated downstairs neighbor. I was shocked. I had always been cordial and polite to him and he seemed to just explode. I looked at him, laughed and said sorry. That day I logged a complaint with our HOA and told them he was offensive and threatening. I really wanted to pound on his small brained head, but I consider myself sort of refined. I now have no regards as to what noise I make. I just make sure it is between the allowed hours.

I've lived downstairs. I know that it is inevitable you will hear noises. It's not the tenants fault, it is the fault of constructors cutting corners. The American way. I've lived oversees in apartments and they were either made of brick walls or real wood. Let me tell you, we paid a pretty penny for our condo so we can live upstairs in peace. I even warned them before they bought that the condos downstairs were horrible. But they were cheap which is why they bought it. I love where we live and like (most of) our neighbors. Had Mr. Neanderthal left a nice note on our door or come upstairs later that day and politely ask to keep the noise down because he can't sleep, I wouldn't have also taken up jump rope!

Moral of the story: You want complete quietness? Go live in space.