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Moved into a just remodeled house. Our daughter's bedroom hears all the noise from upstairs and adjoining walls including stairs to our room.

After looking at options including spray-foam insulation, which is only moderately effective, I decided to trim the stairs to avoid noise vibrations carrying, adding a rubber carpet to the stair tread, and adding ship lap to one wall.

Is there anything else I can do like, rubber mat under shiplap or slight, very slight fir out?

I'm not leaving ugly foam on walls or tearing out freshly redone walls.

Noise is mostly dog nails and people voices. No creaking no house noise like ducting. We didn't even have ductwork which is a whole different post. Definitely adding ship-lap to the wall. I may try the acoustic drywall with specific caulk/sealant then ship lap over that. Also trimming stairs so that vibration don’t travel before putting new treads and risers. Thank you peeps for the information. The drywall now is brand new. I guess I could remove some but d/t angles and such I think it would be easier just to add to it.

Criggie
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Tracie B
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  • related – FreeMan Sep 27 '23 at 21:44
  • Look into white noise machines for the room. Carpet/soft floor covering will help on the stairs, but depends if it is foot falls or stairs moving/squeaking. – crip659 Sep 27 '23 at 21:44
  • So you're contemplating adding a rubber mat beneath a layer of boards that you already added to a wall? And your "very slight furr out"? This is beneath the layer of boards also? Or are you open to furring out other walls as well? Your constraints don't seem to leave much room for solutions that you haven't already enumerated. – popham Sep 27 '23 at 22:41
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    Your edit would have been allowed, except that it came from a different username. Please use the original username. I've resolved the edit for you. – Criggie Sep 28 '23 at 01:23
  • Is there another room your daughter might like to move to ? Just the act of relocating might make it seem quieter. – Criggie Sep 28 '23 at 01:32

2 Answers2

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Metal ducts tend to transmit sound such that there's no real way to stop it short of dismantling parts of your HVAC system, so that noise transmission is the baseline that you're not going to improve upon.

First follow the standard advice of caulking openings and weatherproofing interior doors.

If you're open to adding more drywall without tearing anything out, then you should consider acoustic drywall. It's basically normal drywall with layers of viscoelastic material sandwiched internally (reminiscent of your rubber mat). The price is 2 to 4 times the cost of normal drywall. Without even furring out the wall(s) you could put this material on top of the existing drywall. There exist caulking tubes full of soundproofing stuff for between the existing drywall and the new layers, where (if it was cheap enough) I would throw that in the space between the old drywall and the acoustic stuff. I have no idea how acoustic drywall scales with multiple layers, but I would explore that possibility if I was already implementing a single layer.

popham
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An easy win is to trim the dog's nails/claws to reduce the noise entering the home's structure.

Most clawed animals wear their nails down in the wild. Only our pampered pets get to grow them out resulting in a clicky-click as they walk.

You'll need a special stout set of cutters - regular scissors won't do it and tools like pliers can damage the nail causing the pet pain.

If you're not comfortable doing it yourself, a veterinarian will. Either do it as part of the annual checkup, or watch the vet do it.

Further info should be available on https://pets.stackexchange.com/

In the same vein, you can become a "no-shoes-inside" house. These are free or cheap(ish) and can be tested easily.

Criggie
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