My office room is located in the ground floor of our house and is adjacent to the living room of my uncle who lives in the ground floor. We have excellent relations but the trouble was the noise from the television whenever they watched it. There is a door (which is permanently closed) between my office room and their living room. Evenings are always sound-full and so are the afternoons (soap timings) It was annoying to say the least. Whether they followed the stories (are they any?) in the soaps they watch or not, I knew them. I know the characters, some of the dialogues. It's more like listening to AIR dramas in the bygone era. I did not think it was right on my part to ask them not watch it. I can't even ask them to reduce the sound, because my uncle needs it loud to be able to hear. I was searching for solutions on the net. Acoustic curtains, that will cut / reduce noise are there all over the net but I couldn't find any in Coimbatore despite visiting almost all the shops selling curtains / home furnishing items. I almost settled for the status-quo and kept telling myself to focus hard and treat work as meditation. Ignore outside noise, listen to the inner sound, try harder, try harder. The harder I tried more annoyed I became. Out of the blue came a suggestion from a friend, who asked me to do thermocol packing. I followed his instructions and completed a thermocol packing this morning.
First, I pasted the brown color packing tape all over the edges of the door. Then stuck thermocol over the gaps in, under and over the door and taped it again. Then made a thermocol door (pasted 4x2 thermocol pieces and taped them), stuck it, leaving 4'' gap from the closed door, between the walls where the door. So far so good. There was considerable reduction in the noise when they switched on TV some time back. It made me feel good, having done all the work for nearly three hours on my own. To make it (sound reduction) more effective, planning to buy a heavy curtain and hang it in front of the thermocol door.
As you can see it is far from a neat and professional work but has helped in improving the situation. The picture captures only the top half of the thermocol door as taking the picture of the entire door would have meant removing and rearranging all my laptop and accessory wiring. If someone who needs a solution for cutting down noise finds this article, this article would have achieve its purpose.
