Noisy house

Try covering the walls with eggs cartons My Dad has an OCD with sound, he whispers a lot too and is always going on about ways to reduce noise around the house, for some reason he seems to think the sound of loud motorbikes and rock music has made his ears more senstive to sound (but that seems a bit backwards to me)

 

I can understand that if he's an old biker his ears will be well tuned. Proper old school bikers can tell that their ignition timing has drifted by half a degree, or their points gap has widened down to bare metal, just by the change in engine note

 

Downstairs we've got parquet flooring, upstairs it's stripped boards and the sound does echo through the house but (mainly because I hate carpets), I find a few strategically placed rugs help. I'm not a fan of curtains either, but I do have them - quite heavy ones - which are never pulled, but they do 'finish off' a window, add accent colours to the rooms and help with deadening the sound.

The majority of sound coming into our house is because of its location, we're at the end of our lane and although the garage is separate from the house, it stands slightly in front of it, this, together with our neighbour's properties creating a roughly 'horseshoe' shape makes the perfect conditions for even fairly quiet, everyday sounds to reverberate and be magnified somewhat, so even a normal conversations sound like a street party - you just have to remember that, should you wish to talk about your neighbours, it's really best to do it indoors!