De-Stress Signals - TimeOut
Web Link: http://www.timeoutny.com/checkout/136/136.check.insulate.txt.html
By Dina Lewis Photograph by Roderick Angle
You had to bribe a super to get your alcove studio, and you happily fork over half of your salary in order to live in a city with 24-hour egg-roll delivery. But waking up to a Sunday-morning chorus of car alarms could leave even the most devoted New Yorker yearning for a cottage in the woods. Well, now you can check the honking horns at your doorstep and turn your apartment into the next best thing to a cabin on Walden Pond.
These half-dozen companies offer products and services ranging from noise-proof window treatments and customized environmental sound machines to sun-diffusing solar screens and hand-painted murals-all designed to help you shut out (or at least minimize) all the minuses of city life without giving up any of the pluses.
CitiQuiet
If you've come to define a "good night's sleep" as that 15-minute nap you get in between your neighbor's band practice and the 5am garbage pickup, then give Citiquiet a call. A representative will come to your apartment, listen to your whining, take some measurements and then custom-make a set of noise-elimination windows to help hush those city sounds. The windows ($500-$2,000 each) are installed from the inside of your apartment; they open and close, don't require any building approval and can be removed in a flash. If your problem is less about buses and more about the Chihuahua next door, Citiquiet can even soundproof your walls, ceilings or floors ($25-$45/sq. foot). The company also makes draft-elimination windows ($150-$1850 each) that will ensure you never again have to sleep in a Polartec unitard. This small company guarantees 100 percent satisfaction and has "love letters" from former clients to prove it.
