LESLIE: Jerry in West Virginia is on the line with a soundproofing question. How can we help you today?
JERRY: The second floor master, we want to convert into a movie room. However, it’s over our son’s bedroom. He’s six years old and what I’ve noticed is the volume, there’s like no sound barrier between the first and second floor. So, when I hear my wife reading him a bedtime story, I can hear it very plainly upstairs.
TOM: And that’s typical because there’s no insulation in those walls, so you will get some sound transmission. If you want to try to soundproof those walls or the ceiling, there is a number of ways to do that.
There’s a type of drywall that you can apply, as a second layer, that will be quieter than the traditional type of drywall. It’s called QuietRock. To do that, you’d probably have to take out the old drywall. The other issue is that wherever you have a gap in those walls for an electrical outlet or a light switch or anything like that, they have to be sealed properly to deliver the soundproofing.
And then there’s another way to do this where you put a second layer of regular drywall on the first layer that’s already there. You use a material called Green Glue, which provides sort of a sound-insulation barrier between the two rooms. So by improving the drywall between the surfaces, you can reduce some of the sound. But I don’t know. You said, “Movie room.” If it gets pretty loud in there, it’s probably not going to stop all of it.
JERRY: Yeah. We were kind of hoping to do some type of cork floor upstairs. I thought there may be something that would help.
TOM: Well, I mean that’ll help a little bit but the drywall of the ceiling below is where you’ll really have a chance to stop it.
JERRY: OK. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate your help and I love your show. We listen to it all the time.
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