squeek? eek!

As opposed to my own decision to live in an RV, a friend of mine (we'll call him J.) decided recently to rent a unit in a quadplex. He is in the upper-right unit. J. moved in a little more than two weeks ago and, not surprisingly for him, is being very slow about getting settled in. Anyway, today, as he is leaving to go to his job in a tool-and-die plant, J. finds the note below under his door.

J. is mortified. He is searching through his mind for exactly what anyone who could hear everything going on in his bedroom might have heard in the last two weeks, and he finds considerable comfort in the fact that he leads a singularly boring existence. Even so, obviously, he likes to talk on the phone in bed and just basically likes privacy, and so doesn't want to have to worry about his neighbor overhearing when, for example, he decides he must sing along with "Hey Ya!", et cetera.

The bedroom is currently in the room that shares a wall with the other unit, and his office in the corner room. He originally had planned to have his bedroom in the corner room, but wasn't able to do this because he has this large L-shaped desk (where he plans tool-and-die projects) that doesn't quite fit right in the other room (it overlaps with this door that goes onto his balcony). The L basically has to go the wrong way and doesn't look right.

Anyway, now, even if he did want to switch his bedroom and office, he has enough furniture that he certainly wouldn't be able to move it himself. J. suspects he could not even move it with one other person's help. Plus, the doors would need to be taken off their hinges to move the desk.

Any ideas? For example, neither J. nor I know anything about acoustics and he's wondering if there would be some obvious way of dampening the noise in his bedroom, because it does have these wood floors and seems to bounce sound around a lot.

J. knows that the adjacent apartment includes a 45-year old woman, but he doesn't know if she lives by herself or with someone else. J. plans on knocking on the neighbor's door tonight and try to talk to her/them about it and see if they have any ideas. I'll keep you posted as I get updates from J. on the situation.