macgyvering the bedroom

yesterday, i took soundproofing measures into my own hands.

the young guy who lives on the other side of my bedroom wall is, apparently, somewhat clueless about noise and how sound travels and the fact that he doesn't actually live in a soundproof isolation chamber where he can do whatever he likes and no one will ever hear him.

to be fair, as far as noisy (or psychotic) neighbours go, he's not that bad. he doesn't blast his music at all hours, he doesn't have screaming arguments or temper tantrums when everyone else is trying to sleep and, as of yet, he's never been escorted out by police or had his apartment inspected for filth.

he does, however, have a propensity for being up very late -- or very early, depending on your perspective -- and being heavy of foot and hand when he is. doors slam, windows are loudly dragged shut, random items sound like they're being tossed to the floor. and, of course, there were his wee-hours dalliances with his girlfriend a little over a week ago.

much as i wished he'd be a little more considerate, the middle-of-the-night clunks, bangs, crashes and booms continued. never for more than four or five minutes, total, but always loudly enough that i would be startled awake, heart pounding, wondering what the eff that sound was.

last week, as i wrote in an earlier blog post, i began devising options for myself. what could i do, i thought, to manage my end of the situation in the best, most effective way possible?

first step: quit bemoaning said situation. much to my surprise, i didn't wind up spending weeks agonizing over lost sleep and asshat neighbours and ineffective building management. i didn't sit on big red, seething or depressed.

i actually went to work on solutions.

i started researching my soundproofing options -- what could i, as a renter who doesn't own her space and therefore can't really make any permanent changes to it, do to make my bedroom quieter? turns out, plenty. though i wasn't really ready, willing or able to go out and buy a whole lot of sheetrock so i could install a secondary "buffer" wall, i certainly could rearrange furniture.

that led to some brainstorming about room configuration and things like how i might build a radiator cover to give myself a new nightstand. i started browsing sites like ikea.ca to see about storage solutions that might also provide some sound-muffling. i debated whether i should repaint.

when i stepped off the renovation hamster wheel, i continued looking for soundproofing techniques i might try. the key, i learned, is to prevent sound from traveling into the room via the amplifier that is that cement wall. to do that, i'd need to create some buffer-like air space between the wall and the rest of the room. i could hang photos, put up shelves, suspend a curtain parallel to the wall or, believe or not, wedge a 10-pound bag of sand up against the wall to deaden some of the vibrations it gives off.

so many ideas!

and, the more i researched, the more empowered i felt.

eventually, i decided to shift my bed away from the wall, swap out the head and foot (i.e., i'd sleep with my head at the foot of the bed, and my feet where my head normally lies) and then, tacky as it may look, i'd tape one of my polar-fleece blankets right across the wall.

i fashioned a headboard (i don't have a real one) out of a clothes-drying rack i turned on its side and secured in place by wedging it between the bed and two heavy boxes to prevent it from moving during the night. i then took my workout mat, unrolled it and leaned it up against the wall below the hanging blanket.

honestly, my bedroom is a few cushions short of a pillow fort at this point.

BUT...

when it was all put together in its designed-by-a-toddler fashion, i was pretty damn proud of myself. i tested out the acoustics and noted a distinct difference -- the sound absorption had definitely improved, and that big, empty cement wall was now providing subtle muffling instead of amplification.

more importantly, though, i was pleased that i'd traded my usual approach to a challenging situation (worry and stress and angst) and opted to tackle it head on instead. being proactive felt great! i managed to use my obsessive googling for good instead of reinforcing bad, and to seek out possible answers to my problems rather than just focusing on the problems themselves.

fingers crossed it all works. or, at least, provides a temporary fix until such time as YB drops in to help me move my bed and dresser.