The Loud House

Those of you who have followed my exploits in excruciating detail know that I spent the last year purging, packing, donating, disposing and otherwise trying to get rid of everything not deemed essential or nostalgic in anticipation of my move to an “active adult” community.  That meant living room furniture and a bed went out the door.  My collection of autographed baseballs went to my BFF’s grandsons (minus Mickey Mantle, signed before he died – we assume – which stays with me until I’m gone) along with a baseball glove I hadn’t used in years.  Books, clothes, household stuff were all given away.  There was a garage sale that cleared a modest profit.  Several churches benefited from my cleaning out, and I was happy to see it go.

What remained was packed ever so carefully, with each box labeled in the top, side and end so I would be able to see what was in it.  The movers told me I did such a good job I could work for them.  No, thanks.  They worked like dogs and displayed incredible strength and endurance, yet they found a way to stack boxes in the wrong rooms and in a way that I couldn’t read the contents on the box.  Still, I have managed to locate everything I packed.  I was so careful in packing my artwork that you would have thought I was shipping original Renoirs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The only thing that broke was a framed picture that needed to be reframed anyway.

The huge basement in the new house is now the resting place for old tables and lamps that don’t fit in, for patio furniture that has to wait until there is a real patio next year, and for a collection of broken down boxes that I didn’t need but had to remove from the old house.  Somewhere in this material I may eventually find the missing tape dispenser, which, on its own, seemed to have jumped ship sometime during the packing process.  Of course, that was the best one of the several I had on hand.

So I was prepared, and the plans I made helped smooth the process.  One thing I didn’t count on was the noise.  Not from the move – from the house.

Some of you may remember the original reality series on PBS about the aptly named Loud family.  I think I have moved into their house.  Not that I have their drama, which was ample, but it is just so LOUD here.

I moved into my beautiful new home in late September.  Of course, in the beginning in any new space you notice every sound, and think, “What’s that?”  Some sounds are more subtle than others.  I can hear trains going by at night, which is not disturbing, just faintly audible.  But turn on the air conditioning and it sounds like the test lab at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  When the weather turned cold, I tried out the heat.  That lasted about three minutes, because the loud sound was accompanied by the siren of the smoke/carbon monoxide alarm.  The new smell, burning stuff off, I assume, caused it, because I’m still here to tell the tale.  I can hear the water heater operating and the occasional random running of the toilet in my master bathroom, which failed to correct itself even after my handyman installed a new flapper in a perfectly new toilet.

Then there was the washing machine.  Located in a laundry room off the garage, where the room has a louvered door (which would hardly be soundproof), the machine generated a sound that potentially could violate local noise ordinances.  I was afraid to do laundry for fear of waking the neighbors – or the dead.  When the GE repairman was here to look at the defective control panel on my brand new stove, I threw in a load so he could “see” the problem first hand.  He literally ran from the kitchen to the laundry room when he heard what sounded like a fire hose battering the insides of the washer.  His explanation was that the installers bent the base of the machine, so the wash tub was rubbing against it, causing that ungodly sound, as if I were washing a load of rocks.  All he needed was a metal bar to bend the base back and away from the tub.  Now my loads are blissfully quiet.

The new TV in the family room has the requisite sound bar, because listening to the TV speakers just wouldn’t be enough for me, the sales folks at P.C. Richards explained.  So now, every time I hear a rumble from the bass, I wonder “What’s that?”  The installation is not yet complete, because, like everything in this house – and much like the movie “The Money Pit” – everything can be done, but it takes two weeks.  The TV, the alarm system (I haven’t heard the sound from that yet but I’m sure once it is hooked up it will scare the crap out of me), the window treatments, new cabinet doors to replace the damaged ones and even reframing a picture – all take two weeks.  My non-functioning control panel on the stove is the exception to the two-week rule.  The part is on back order, so that will be at least three weeks.

And speaking of window treatments, because there aren’t any (except for the paper shades I installed myself before I moved in to protect my privacy), this house, with its very high ceilings, hardwood floors and minimal carpeting, is like an echo chamber.  When I talk on the phone it sounds like I fell down a mine shaft.  I don’t know how much fabric and other additions it will take to eliminate that hollow sound.

And, for the foreseeable future, nothing will eliminate the sound of the construction vehicles and workers building out the rest of this end of the development.  The houses on either side of me are still under construction, so every day there are workers on bulldozers digging up the front yards for the installation of sprinkler system and lawns, or laying the driveway, digging a foundation across the street, hammering the shingles on a roof, delivering equipment or installing electrical.  When they get down to painting, the noise should subside.  Until then, the soundtrack of my day is saws sawing, hammers hammering, drills drilling.

Every now and then the noise is amplified by the sound of the street sweeper truck, which makes a futile attempt at keeping the roads clean, an impossible task.  A 3-year old boy would have a field day here, watching trucks of every kind go by, with their back-up sirens beeping incessantly.  There are bobcats and tomcats and bulldozers galore, each with their own sound and destined to accompany my stay here for a year or more, by my personal estimate.  Then I will only have to contend with the lawn mowing army who descend on the neighborhood early in the day (Saturday morning by 8 AM they were on hand) to make us look good.

In addition to the sounds, I can look out on the port-a-potties and watch my personal HGTV show as the framers frame and the roofers roof and the planters plant.

And yet, despite the dirt, dust and din, I find it peaceful here.  I sit in my beautiful – if loud – office and watch the activity outside, knowing that one day, this will truly be a beautiful neighborhood where I will find my own peace and quiet.

But until then – man, it is LOUD here!