We all know one. They live among us. Dwell in our ranks. Hidden in plain sight.
The Karens.
In this post, one Karen finds out her enemy will not go down quietly. Let’s tune in…
Sometime around 2002 my wife and I moved into an 1100 Sq ft condominium with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths.
We were very fortunate to get this condominium as a second owner and we paid only $114,000 (6 grand more than the original price).
Our condo was on the third floor and ALL rooms were carpeted throughout the condo with only one small 4’X4′ square of linoleum inside the front door to the outside breezeway.
(This will become important later. And yes, even the bathrooms, kitchen and dining room were carpeted.)
They seemed to like their neighbors.
The front door opened to a large open space with vaulted ceilings with the great room to the left and the dining room and kitchen to the right.
The Kitchen area was separated from the great room with a wall that had a cutout over the kitchen sink and we had a long hallway directly going out of the great room to all the bedrooms and straight in front of the front door.
We got to know some of the neighbors and got along well with most of them. The neighbors directly below us were a young couple that were attending University and were nice and cordial with us.
Shortly after they graduated, they rented out their condo to her brother and his college friends.
Late night revelry is excusable every now and again.
The brother was a decent guy and we mostly had no problems except for one of his birthdays where their music and boisterous conversations and happy birthdays!!! etc. kept us up until 4:30am in the morning.
My wife and I returned the favor by blasting our music the very next morning at 8:00am. But we talked a couple of weeks later and all had a laugh about it and never had any real problems after that.
Time for more new neighbors.
Between 2004 and 2006 we changed all the flooring in the kitchen and dining room to ceramic tile (including the area in front of the front door) to avoid having to pay for carpet cleaning in the dining or kitchen area due to spills or our young daughter throwing food on the floor from her high chair.
In 2007 our cordial neighbors sold their condo to an older newlywed couple (late 20s to early 30s). Now if anyone has lived in between a first and a third floor condo or apartment you will know that it is the WORST place to be if you expect silence.
This is how she found out she had new neighbors…
With kids or music you will always have some noise that filters through the floor or ceiling. I don’t know WHAT they were thinking or expecting when they moved in there.
I was blissfully unaware that the condo had been sold until one day about a month later I brought home a powered subwoofer and hooked it up to my home theater sound system (around 6PM).
I promptly put on an action flick with some big explosions and sat down to enjoy the new and improved immersive sound.
After a little bit of gunfire and 2 explosions I hear the doorbell “ding dong.”
I get up and immediately hear “ding dong” again. I walk the 5 ft to my front door and open it to see my entitled neighbor (I’ll call her Karen) standing on my doorstep.
Uh-oh, this action film led to some real live reactions.
Me: “Hi. Can I help you?”
Very agitated Karen: “My Husband and I are TRYING to enjoy a QUIET and peaceful dinner. Can you PLEASE turn down whatever show you are watching? We can hear everything that’s going on!”
Me: “Oh, uhhh… sure. Sorry about that!”
She turned around and walked away. I closed the door, turned the subwoofer down a ways and the main volume down a bit and thought nothing of it.
Problem solved. Actually, far from it!
Shortly after the next round of gunfire and explosions I hear the “ding dong” and then some rapidfire knocking at my door.
I paused my movie and then I opened the door to see Karen again.
Me: “Uhhh. Hi. What can I do for you?”
Karen: “We can STILL hear everything from your show! You need to turn it down now!”
At this point I was a little fed up with her crap and decided to call her on it.
Me: “You say you can hear everything. Can you give me some of the last dialogue you heard?”
Karen: ” I DON”T KNOW! I just know you are watching XXXX show.” (She was TOTALLY wrong)
Me: “No. I am actually watching YYYY movie and here are the last 3 lines of dialogue…” and I gave her those lines.
Me: “It seems you can’t hear my movie as well as you are claiming.”
Karen: (with blazing eyes and red in the face) “I DON’T CARE!! It’s TOO LOUD!! You need to turn it down!”
Me: “Actually noise ordinance says I DON’T have to turn it down until 10PM.”
Karen: (getting huffy) “FINE! I guess my husband and I will have to go OUT to eat to get some peace and quiet!!”
Me: (In my most cheerful voice and waving) “Have a good night!”
Sounds like this Karen needs to live in a cabin in the woods.
I then turned my subwoofer up a little and the main volume back up to its previous level and enjoyed the rest of my movie. (The neighbors did end up going out that night for dinner or whatever)
At our next HOA meeting Karen stands up and complains long and loud about the noise.
How she can hear kids jumping on the *carpeted* floor (we had a 4 year old) and crying (we had a new baby), and hear us walking up and down our hallway and hear our music and movies and tv shows.
How the Hispanic neighbors on the first floor play their music on Saturday morning so loud they can’t sleep in and argue so loud they can hear every word etc. etc. ad nauseum.
This went on for 6 months.
The HOA was NOT on Karen’s side.
EVERY TIME she complained the HOA told her, “If it’s between the hours of 8am-10PM, we can do nothing. If it’s after 10pm and before 8am, you can call the police.”
Then the HOA would send out a letter by U.S. mail asking everyone to be cognizant of their neighbors and laying out the local city noise ordinance.
I finally stopped attending the HOA meetings after month 3 of the same bullcrap. She never failed to visit at least once or twice in the week after these notices and twice she taped them to my door.
I also learned during this time that they were members of our church and had actually been assigned to visit us each month (they never did).
Cue the Pro Revenge.
Payback time. Everybody loves living next to construction, right?
Around the 6-7 month mark of her constant complaints and harassment and even a couple of visits from some VERY apologetic police officers after 11pm at night (they said they could hear NOTHING outside of my condo door) we decided to upgrade our flooring.
We knew this would inflame our entitled neighbor, but we didn’t care as we were tired of the constant stream of complaints from them.
We chose to extend the entry tile all the way from the front door, down the long hallway to the master bedroom door and we wanted to tile the bathrooms as well. We also went with a light coffee-colored bamboo hardwood in our great room.
Sooooo…. demolition first.
We tore out the carpet and tack strips and pried the base-molding trim off the walls. As I’m removing the last of the nails from the walls and subfloor (about noon on a Saturday), wouldn’t ya know it….BANG!BANG!BANG! from the front door.
OP was NOT messing around!
Me: “Yes?”
Karen: “Can you keep it down? I’m trying to have a Pampered Chef party!”
Me: “Sure”
I promptly finished pulling or driving in nails and then proceeded to bang my hammer all over the subflooring like I was driving LOADS of new nails for the next hour.
I made sure to turn on my stereo to the local hard rock station and turn it up for the next 4 hours.
It got even louder.
(FYI the 1st floor neighbors were already blaring some GREAT Mariachi music. They did this every Saturday and Sunday as they cleaned their condo from top to bottom.)
We then rented a hardwood floor nailer that, in addition to compressor noise and to LOUDLY driving a nail into the flooring and subfloor, also had to be struck with a large deadblow hammer.
BANG!… BANG!… BANG!
It took us 2-3 days to install the coffee-colored bamboo hardwood flooring in the great room and we were SURE it was driving Karen absolutely BATTY.
We ended up installing an AWESOME tile inlay down the hall, had tile running from the front door to the master bedroom door along the great room side of the divider wall, tile in the dining room, kitchen and both bathrooms.
We got the base molding on (more nail gun and compressor fun) and caulked.
Sound proofing was out the window.
The new floors looked amazing and the bonus was, every time a hard shoe (like my daughter’s favorite Sunday shoes she wore EVERYWHERE, EVERY DAY) or high heel (my wife chose to learn how to do everything in 4-6 inch stilettos during this time) struck the floor it was like the impact echoed through our perfect floors.
All this was due to our neighbor complaining.
They moved out and made a pretty penny.
It was also in preparation to sell our condo as we had grown out of it by this time. We sold it within 1 month of listing at $160,000.
During closing the real estate agent for the new owners told us that the floors absolutely sold this place. We also sold at the very top of the real estate boom right before the real estate market crashed.
We later learned from some of our neighbors that within 9 months of our selling our condo the 2nd floor entitled neighbors moved out and sold their condo for $30,000 less than we had (and took about an $8,000 LOSS).
They they sent a letter of complaint to the HOA stating their condo was unlivable because of the noise from our incredible floors. 😉
These neighbors were definitely never destined to be friends!
Let’s see how the comments think this revenge stacks up…
One person says it’s not so pro.
This person says, best to avoid shared walls altogether.
This person says Karen didn’t deserve the insult to her injuries.
Another user suggests that it might be a tale of two Karens.
And this user has misophonia just thinking about it…
This pro revenge sounds like an amateur act to me.
If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.
