My neighbours are ‘torturing’ me with the noise of their wooden flooring and loud kids – I’ve taken drastic action
A MILLIONAIRE businessman and his wife say they are tortured by kids who play CRICKET in the flat above.
Constant crying and footsteps on newly installed wooden floors has made Sergey and Maria Grazhdankin’s existence a misery, they say.
The pair moved into their £1m-plus fourth floor apartment in a gated art deco development in West Kensington, London, in 2011.
The Grazhdankins enjoyed peace and quiet in North End House, Fitz-James Avenue, but the wooden floors shattered their tranquillity.
And they say the behaviour of City banker Medhi Guissi and his wife and family upstairs makes them feel they are in a flatshare.
Sergey, 42, who runs an insurance services company, is now suing his neighbours over the alleged noise “nuisance” which has cost him £250,000 in lawyers’ bills.
At Central London County Court, he is asking Judge Tracey Bloom to order the Guissis to tear up their floor and lay it again in a way which eliminates the noise from creaking joists.
But Mr Guissi and his wife, Meriem El Harouchi, are fighting the case, claiming the Grazhdankins cannot complain about everyday sounds of a family in their own home.
They say their neighbours have become oversensitive to the normal day-to-day noise of family life, having lived for many years with only an elderly single lady as a neighbour above them.
The court heard the Giussis bought the apartment above the Grazhdankins for £1.1m in 2018 and began gutting it.
They tore out walls, changed the layout of the rooms and replaced the carpet with a wooden floor, including a floating acoustic barrier in an attempt to aleviate any noise.
But the Grazhdankins say this was fitted incorrectly, with nails driven through and into joists, against the instructions of the manufacturers.
The “incorrect” installation of the floor resulted in the creaking, they say.
Sergey said the pair are now “woken up daily between 5.30am and 7.30am” by noises, which begin around “7am and 8am” on weekends.
He added: “Walking, banging, jumping sounds, children running and voices, creaking floor, dropping things on the floor, children crying, shouting and voices.
“This is experienced especially between 2pm and 10pm. Living with this every day since we moved is torture.”
Sergey said his wife now suffers from stress and insomnia and feels afraid as she tries to sleep.
Following complaints and a previous court hearing, Mr Guissi installed carpets, but the noise is still present and continues to affect the Grazhdankins, he said.
Representing the Giussis, barrister Tom Morris said the Grazhdankins are complaining about sound made by acts of “ordinary residential occupation” of a family home.
The acts “are not done maliciously or with the intention of disturbing the claimant, but reasonably and with proper consideration for the interests of the claimant,” he said.
The trial continues.