Thread_Bare's Profile

Right now we have the joy of dealing with both incredibly ignorant above stair neighbours and an intolerable amount of outside noise.

The outside disturbance is thanks to the fact that we live directly across the road from a major Sydney train line (with trains running from about 4am to 2am, each day). Admittedly we knew of the train line when we moved in, but since we have been there they have been constructing a new train line, which they keep bungling and have had to extend the dealine several times. They are also now cramming late night/early morning work sessions into the mix to make up for all the stupid mistakes they have made during contruction, such as making the track too steep for our trains to go down and not laying the sleepers properly so that the tracks would lift when a train went over them. I think the morning that they removed the old sleepers was the worst. A garbage truck type vehicle slowly chugged down the tracks as two workers picked up the sleepers and threw them in the back. It was BANG BANG BANg as steel hit steel and this carried on for about 2 hours, starting at 4am! We also don't have to check our clocks at night when we go to bed as each night we get the 11pm cargo train rumbling past for half an hour. Fun times....

As for the neighbors, pardon my french but what a bunch of ar$eholes. We have been living in the building since September 2007 and we have had to go up there twice last year and four times already this year to tell them to STFU. It seems the man of the house hasn't thought to utilise his lock up garage, prefering instead to do all of his carpentry work in the apartment - each and every night! They also love to stomp, slam doors, hammer various surfaces, bang a lot, speak loudly in a foreign language and all the other benefits of having neighbors that don't seem to understand or consider that the people underneath may be able to hear everything that they do, even after we have told them this is the case. They also have a strange quirk of having houseplants all over the frickin apartment and they water them like clockwork at 11pm each night, which to us sounds like someone taking a pi$$ on the floor.

Did I mention an ensuite shower that drips constantly throughout the night? How can they deal with a dripping tap in a room adjoining there main bedroom I have no idea.....

After much wasting energy in trying to politely ask them to keep it down at least late at night, we have written a complaint to body corporate. Hopefully that should sort them out. If it doesn't, and if they are renters, we can techinically get them evicted. Here's hoping it doesn't come to that.....

My weakness is collecting magazines. It irks the sh!t out of my boyfriend as we have moved five times in the past two years and he is usaully the one stuck lugging the boxes of them around. Up until recently I took them with me whenever I moved to, but then a few months ago I realised how insane that was and chucked most of them in our apartment block recycling bins. Man did I feel sorry for the poor garbage man that had to wheel those bins to the truck!

I mostly collect home and fashion mags, although I have cut down on the fashion ones as I am more interested in decorating these days. My favourites are Domino, Martha Stewart Living, Blueprint, Real Simple and Lucky. Since I live in Australia and have to pay a disgusting amount for these mags as Borders has to import them, I find a lot of guilt attached when it comes to chucking them out.

On the other hand, they come in very useful for when I make up mood boards for my apartment decorating ideas, if some else asks me to do up a mood board with a decorating scheme for their place or to cut up and use in the collages that I occassionally like to make. I also study visual merchandising so I use them for lots of inspiration. Not to mention all the handy articles on various subjects.

Plus, they all look so nice when they are neatly lined up with all the colourful spines on display!