tips on soundproofing (or at least sound abating) an old brownstone apt

[buddhahat]

Hi,

My wife, son and I recently bought a 3rd floor apt in a brownstone co-op in Brooklyn.  The realities of a 100 year old apt building is that they are pretty noisy (squeaky hard wood floors, can hear my downstairs neighbor's kid when he cranks up the stereo, can hear the upstairs neighbor's 3 year old daughter when she runs up and down the hallway etc).  I don't imagine there will be way to create 100% silence but I would be happy to try to mitigate as much as possible.  Any tips from folks who have worked with old house/apt situations?

Our hard wood floor needs some repair anyway and I suspect the subflooring is sub-par so this is an area that I would certainly look into.  Can MLV be used here? 

The walls seem ok and thus far I haven't heard anything through the party walls. 

The ceilings are beautiful so I can't imagine adding a drop ceiling to the apt so I'm guessing that I'm stuck with the overhead noise...

thanks!

[Randy S]

Well I must say, you have a realistic understanding of your potential results. So with that being said I would recommend carpet, padding and MLV w/1/4" closed cell foam underlayment.
This way you get some reduction from below and you absorb reflective sound in your unit thus delivering a more noticable reduction.
If you choose to leave the exposed wood floors remember that it is reflective therefore allowing sound waves to bounce around your unit.
Rescrew the substraight to eliminate floor squeek first.