I live in a closed community, ruled by a HOA, where we pay a monthly fee to cover security, street cleaning, some services, etc. I am a mechanic but due to recent company growth, I was assigned to take over a lot of administrative work and follow up with few specialized clients with very broad schedules, usually from 6 AM to 6 PM, so I choose to make a deal with management and work from home, doing specific administrative roles and cover the 12 hour space. Best decision ever for me, some days I wake up at noon with no calls and can cook for my family and pass a lot of time with my daughters. And yes, some days a chaotic and I end up working maybe 14 hours straight, but it’s really rare.
With so many hours free, I choose to follow one of my dreams, which is to learn to play drums. So I did a budget, bought a basic set and used a small room to set it. I really don’t want to disturb the peace, so I invested quite a lot to make the room as soundproof as possible, carpet on the walls, some acoustic panels, rubber around the door edges, it’s a very small room with no windows, the whole length. To test it, I let my girls to play a little and I stood outside the house, and there was really a faint sound, really low. Still, I thought to practice only around noon, and never more than 1 hour per day, knowing that a lot of days I would not practice at all.
3 months, no problem at all, but then, new neighbors moved in, and in my first practice, they called a security guard to silence me and, I quote, the infernal noise I was doing. I was a little bit shocked, thought that I played it a little bit hard and it was my fault and quieted down a bit. I tried to keep it down onwards, play when I didn’t see any of their cars on the front of their house, and so on, but apparently it wasn’t enough because I received a fine for repetitive disruptive sound from the HOA three weeks later. They presented documentation detailing the visit from the security ward and claimed to tried several times to contact me to solve the issue but I never opened. That was a lie, but I had no proof, so had to pay the fine. I was annoyed and kind of sad because I was really enjoying it. And then I had an idea.
In our closed community, we also have some spaces you can use for free because the monthly fee pays for their use and maintenance, like the outdoor pool, some picnic and BBQ areas, and a club house that is like 50 meter from my house. The club house is only a big room to host small parties, you don’t have to pay to use it or clean it, just need to create an appointment to use it, and if it’s free, you can use it. We have a really strict rules about its use, every day you can use it up to 10 PM and midnight on Fridays and Saturdays, and live music or dj´s are approved, well, because it’s for parties, and a lot of times, kid parties. So I recorder the noise level of the parties and one time I asked a drummer that was just getting there to play something hard and measured the level of noise in front of the neighbor’s house, it was a lot less than the normal noise form a party.
So I booked the club house, couple of noon’s on weekdays, where there is almost no one here because everybody is working, and proceeded to continue my drums practice. Yes, the sound was a lot higher than when I used my small room in the house, and yes, I received a visit from different security guards and HOA members to check on me the first couple of weeks, and after a brief explanation, left satisfied that I was not breaking any rules, no fines would be imposed and to carry on. The neighbors sometimes give me the finger from their cars on their way out. And this summer another neighbor’s kid asked if they can practice with me too! Good kid, 13 years old, want to be a musician, hope it will be the next Chad Smith because I suck at this and he is giving me some great tips.
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