So, I suppose I should post the (sorta) good along with the bad.
Anyway, after the incident with the HVAC unit, I did exchange a few emails with the landlord's girlfriend, detailing the issues with the noise and suggesting a few potential remedies (carpet, soundproofing, just moving out of the kitchen late at night). She said at that time that she'd talk to the landlord about it, and that was the last we really spoke of it.
For the last ten days or so, they actually do appear to be making an effort at reducing the amount of noise coming from the kitchen, and haven't had any truly raucous parties in there late at night. While it's not perfect (we can still hear their music, and a bit of walking and kitchen noise) it's been a definite improvement.
Cut to today. Apparently the landlord has found the blog, and isn't too happy about his name and address being used and asked that I remove it from the blog. I don't blame him really, and if he can work to be more reasonable than our original conversation regarding the noise, then I can work to be more reasonable about publishing his name and address in a public forum.
I'm still not happy about being told "you're screwed" in the beginning (as opposed to working this out before it came to documenting disturbances on the internet), but I'll take progress where I can get it.
-Zach
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Yet Again
11:52pm. Music starts. I'm sure there's another one of their parties in the works. So much for civility.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Broken HVAC
Well, apparently the HVAC unit for the main portion of the house went out last night (thank God we have baseboard heat in the basement). We got an email from **REDACTED** this afternoon asking if they could access the apartment so that repairmen can come in. It occurred to me that we may have accidentally bumped the emergency shutoff on the HVAC while doing laundry last night (their HVAC is in our laundry room). Anyway, I just went over to check on it, but the emergency switch is still on, and all of the breakers for both the upstairs and our apartment appear to be in the "on" position. Anyway, **REDACTED LANDLORD** is apparently going into the apartment to look at the breakers for himself. I'm pretty sure their HVAC just gave up the ghost.
Anyway, I've used it as an opportunity to send an email to **REDACTED** asking if we can talk about ways of reducing the amount of noise coming through from the kitchen. I figure I don't have anything to lose by at least trying to talk this out one more time.
Wish me luck.
Anyway, I've used it as an opportunity to send an email to **REDACTED** asking if we can talk about ways of reducing the amount of noise coming through from the kitchen. I figure I don't have anything to lose by at least trying to talk this out one more time.
Wish me luck.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Christmas Music
I just got home from work, and they've got Christmas music playing loud enough that you can hear it on the sidewalk. Right now, I'm sitting in my living room and I can hear every word of "Come All Ye Faithful." I'm heading out to light a show in a little bit, but if they're already this loud at 5:40 in the evening, I don't even want to think about what kind of antics are in store for this evening.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Ugh. I'm at work now. Between the loud talking, the sound of footsteps, and the music, the party upstairs went on until 5am this time. It's hard to get out of bed after that, even though I did get some sleep once the earplugs were in. The thing is, even with the earplugs, you get these little "mini" wake-ups when there's a particularly loud noise. Like, if there's a huge thump or a bang, it wakes you up just for a minute, and you roll over and go back to sleep. Still, it screws with your sleep cycle, so I never get a good night's sleep when **REDACTED LANDLORD** and **REDACTED** have their midweek parties.
I fell asleep in the tub twice this morning while I was getting ready for work, and was a few minutes late getting here, because I stopped at the 7-11 to get some guarana drinks.
Anyway, on to the work day.
I fell asleep in the tub twice this morning while I was getting ready for work, and was a few minutes late getting here, because I stopped at the 7-11 to get some guarana drinks.
Anyway, on to the work day.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
It's 11:45pm., and Katie and I are getting in bed, trying to see if we can't possibly get to sleep tonight. I can clearly hear two males and two females in the kitchen above us. There is a lot of stomping around, and moving of chairs. A minute ago, someone was either knocking on something or chopping something. The music, fortunately, has either stopped or been reduced to a level that we can't hear. However, the conversation is now being held at a level where we can make out the majority of sentences. I sometimes wonder if anyone would be interested in hearing a podcast of the conversations my landlord has, as recorded from my bedroom.
Luckily (for what they're worth) I still have the jar of earplugs beside my bed. Some nights they work well enough to sleep, and other nights they don't. I'm leaving my laptop next to my bed, so I can blog on and off throughout the night as I'm kept awake.
*sigh*
This is no way to live. Shouldn't a landlord have the common decency to allow his tenants a night's sleep?
-Zach
Luckily (for what they're worth) I still have the jar of earplugs beside my bed. Some nights they work well enough to sleep, and other nights they don't. I'm leaving my laptop next to my bed, so I can blog on and off throughout the night as I'm kept awake.
*sigh*
This is no way to live. Shouldn't a landlord have the common decency to allow his tenants a night's sleep?
-Zach
Well, it's 10pm on a Tuesday night, and the music just started upstairs. We can hear the bass of the music coming through the ceiling. This is an almost-certain sign that there will be a party tonight. It's relatively minor now, but if past incidents are any indication, it will get louder as the night goes on. More information as the evening progresses.
-Zach
-Zach
Friday, November 28, 2008
Introduction
Hi. My name is Zach Walls. I'm 28 years old. I work as an IT Admin. I do a little improv and some theatrical lighting in my spare time. I have a lovely girlfriend named Katie, and I live in a basement apartment at **REDACTED ADDRESS** in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, DC, which is where our problems (and the reason for this blog) begin.
In September of 2008 Katie and I, after living together in Alexandria, VA for a couple of years, decided it was time to move into the city. With the help of Craigslist and a lot of patient searching, we found a lovely little basement apartment in Adams Morgan. When we looked at the apartment, we spoke with **REDACTED**, the girlfriend of the owner, **REDACTED LANDLORD**, both of whom live in the main (non-basement) portion of the building. During the process of looking at the apartment, signing the lease, etc., we never did meet **REDACTED LANDLORD**, but **REDACTED** seemed nice enough, and the apartment was nice, and in a neighborhood we wanted to live in. During this time, we only once had any forewarning of the difficulties we would soon face, when **REDACTED** said something to the effect of, "We like to stay up late, so you might hear us once in a while." Now, I've lived in a number of less-than-silent environments such as dorms, and Katie and I often go to bed at midnight or 1am ourselves, so we didn't consider this a problem. Little did we know that "a little late" often means "until dawn" and "you might hear us once in a while" means, "you can hear everything, we do this a couple of times a week, and we will make no attempt to mitigate our noise." These are not the same thing, and I don't believe any person would normally interpret them to be so.
We began moving into the apartment on October 1, spending our first night there on October 6. Within the first week there, we were kept awake on two separate nights by parties taking place in the landlord's kitchen, which is directly above our bedroom. The amount of noise coming from the room above us was ridiculous. The vast majority of conversation in the kitchen was audible in the bedroom. The footsteps, movement of chairs, and opening and closing of cabinets was enough to vibrate the walls of the bedroom. The bass-notes of the music (obviously provided by a multi-room stero) were clearly audible not only in the bedroom, but throughout the rest of our apartment. Still, we decided to let it go, and to approach the landlord about it like reasonable people.
Early the next week, I worked from home while I waited for an installer to come hook up our DSL line to the new apartment. While I was waiting, I happened to hear the landlord, **REDACTED LANDLORD**, return from work to his home in the afternoon. I figured that this would be a good opportunity to politely resolve the matter, so I wandered out of my front door to speak to **REDACTED LANDLORD** before he went inside. Now, as it's been a few weeks, the following should not be interpreted as a literal transcript, but the conversation went something like this:
Zach: Hey **REDACTED LANDLORD**, I just wanted to mention that our bedroom is right below your kitchen..
REDACTED LANDLORD: Yeah, you can hear everything, right? We've had complaints about that before. **REDACTED** didn't tell you that?
Zach: She told me that you guys stay up late and that we might hear you once in a while.
**REDACTED LANDLORD**: We thought about soundproofing, or rearranging the layout of the downstairs, but that didn't work...
and then my landlord, the person I'm paying nearly $1800/month to for this apartment, literally said, "you're screwed," and suggested I invest in some earplugs.
Strangely enough, I did already happen to have a jar of foam earplugs, rated for 32dBa of sound reduction, that I bought for use when working in the server room at work. Not that one should have to sleep with earplugs in, but we have tried it. Guess what? It hasn't worked too well, and we still get woken up by the parties upstairs. We've tried putting a fan in the bedroom to generate white-noise. We can still hear the stomping and chair-scraping and cabinets and shouted conversations. It's been almost two months of living here now, and we have literally been woken from a dead sleep at least once a week (usually twice or more a week) by parties that start between midnight and 2am and don't end until somewhere between 3am and 6am.
I like to think we're reasonable people, and we do have a lease. A lease is a legal agreement, and I don't particularly want to break it. However, my landlord is not holding up his end of the bargain. A person should be able to sleep in a place they're paying rent for, and they should expect reasonable accommodation from the owners of said space. Had the landlord not been so rude about the matter, all it would have taken to satisfy us was moving the party to a different room and turning the radio down a little bit. Instead, I've spent the last few weeks talking to friends and relatives in the legal profession about how to get out of this lease without being at-fault.
From what I've been told, the landlord is likely in breach of the Covenant of Quiet Enjoyment. However, I have also been told that I should send a certified letter detailing the complaint, and that I should build my case by documenting the time/duration of the disturbances, hence this blog.
Thank you for reading, and if you feel like following our saga here, or sending words of encouragement, we appreciate it.
-Zach
In September of 2008 Katie and I, after living together in Alexandria, VA for a couple of years, decided it was time to move into the city. With the help of Craigslist and a lot of patient searching, we found a lovely little basement apartment in Adams Morgan. When we looked at the apartment, we spoke with **REDACTED**, the girlfriend of the owner, **REDACTED LANDLORD**, both of whom live in the main (non-basement) portion of the building. During the process of looking at the apartment, signing the lease, etc., we never did meet **REDACTED LANDLORD**, but **REDACTED** seemed nice enough, and the apartment was nice, and in a neighborhood we wanted to live in. During this time, we only once had any forewarning of the difficulties we would soon face, when **REDACTED** said something to the effect of, "We like to stay up late, so you might hear us once in a while." Now, I've lived in a number of less-than-silent environments such as dorms, and Katie and I often go to bed at midnight or 1am ourselves, so we didn't consider this a problem. Little did we know that "a little late" often means "until dawn" and "you might hear us once in a while" means, "you can hear everything, we do this a couple of times a week, and we will make no attempt to mitigate our noise." These are not the same thing, and I don't believe any person would normally interpret them to be so.
We began moving into the apartment on October 1, spending our first night there on October 6. Within the first week there, we were kept awake on two separate nights by parties taking place in the landlord's kitchen, which is directly above our bedroom. The amount of noise coming from the room above us was ridiculous. The vast majority of conversation in the kitchen was audible in the bedroom. The footsteps, movement of chairs, and opening and closing of cabinets was enough to vibrate the walls of the bedroom. The bass-notes of the music (obviously provided by a multi-room stero) were clearly audible not only in the bedroom, but throughout the rest of our apartment. Still, we decided to let it go, and to approach the landlord about it like reasonable people.
Early the next week, I worked from home while I waited for an installer to come hook up our DSL line to the new apartment. While I was waiting, I happened to hear the landlord, **REDACTED LANDLORD**, return from work to his home in the afternoon. I figured that this would be a good opportunity to politely resolve the matter, so I wandered out of my front door to speak to **REDACTED LANDLORD** before he went inside. Now, as it's been a few weeks, the following should not be interpreted as a literal transcript, but the conversation went something like this:
Zach: Hey **REDACTED LANDLORD**, I just wanted to mention that our bedroom is right below your kitchen..
REDACTED LANDLORD: Yeah, you can hear everything, right? We've had complaints about that before. **REDACTED** didn't tell you that?
Zach: She told me that you guys stay up late and that we might hear you once in a while.
**REDACTED LANDLORD**: We thought about soundproofing, or rearranging the layout of the downstairs, but that didn't work...
and then my landlord, the person I'm paying nearly $1800/month to for this apartment, literally said, "you're screwed," and suggested I invest in some earplugs.
Strangely enough, I did already happen to have a jar of foam earplugs, rated for 32dBa of sound reduction, that I bought for use when working in the server room at work. Not that one should have to sleep with earplugs in, but we have tried it. Guess what? It hasn't worked too well, and we still get woken up by the parties upstairs. We've tried putting a fan in the bedroom to generate white-noise. We can still hear the stomping and chair-scraping and cabinets and shouted conversations. It's been almost two months of living here now, and we have literally been woken from a dead sleep at least once a week (usually twice or more a week) by parties that start between midnight and 2am and don't end until somewhere between 3am and 6am.
I like to think we're reasonable people, and we do have a lease. A lease is a legal agreement, and I don't particularly want to break it. However, my landlord is not holding up his end of the bargain. A person should be able to sleep in a place they're paying rent for, and they should expect reasonable accommodation from the owners of said space. Had the landlord not been so rude about the matter, all it would have taken to satisfy us was moving the party to a different room and turning the radio down a little bit. Instead, I've spent the last few weeks talking to friends and relatives in the legal profession about how to get out of this lease without being at-fault.
From what I've been told, the landlord is likely in breach of the Covenant of Quiet Enjoyment. However, I have also been told that I should send a certified letter detailing the complaint, and that I should build my case by documenting the time/duration of the disturbances, hence this blog.
Thank you for reading, and if you feel like following our saga here, or sending words of encouragement, we appreciate it.
-Zach
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