Article Courtesy of The Sun Sentinel

By Joe Kollin

Published June 12, 2007

Because of her severe allergies and asthma, Vicky Georgoulis sought permission from her Coral Springs condo board to install tile before she moved into her third-floor apartment in 1996.

In the 11 years since, she has spent $7,000 in legal fees, battling her downstairs neighbor who complained of the "constant nightmare" of noise from upstairs.

In April, Broward Circuit Judge Patti Englander Henning ordered Georgoulis, 51, to cover her tile with carpets after an acoustical engineer testified that the cork layer under the tile wasn't thick enough to deaden sound between the floors.

Now Georgoulis says she gets migraines and vomits and suffers nausea. She has difficulty breathing and gets itchy eyes and a runny nose. She takes dozens of pills, including ones for anxiety and depression.

A divorced mother who lives alone, Georgoulis has put her Sherwood Square unit up for sale.

"I live like I'm in jail," she said. "I don't have parties. I don't have dinners. I'm afraid there will be a knock on the door and it will be the cops to arrest me."

The carpet may give Georgoulis problems, but now Anita Falcoabramo, who lives directly below her, says she can finally sleep at night.

"My nightmare is over," said Falcoabramo, an "over 40" building manager who bought her unit in 1993 and says she lived happily in it until Georgoulis installed the tile.

"I could hear every bare footstep, hard-heeled shoes at all hours of the day and night, furniture being moved around ... and loud TV and stereo at all hours," Falcoabramo wrote the condo board on June 8, 1998. "She would commonly go out late in the evening and come home with her heels on at 2, 3, 4 and 5 in the morning, waking me habitually and causing me to go to work severely fatigued."

When the board wouldn't do anything, she hired an attorney and on Nov. 12, 1998, filed suit against Georgoulis. As part of the suit, Falcoabramo hired the acoustical engineer.

The drawn-out fight, which included an arbitrator, cost her considerably more than $10,000; she wouldn't be more precise.

"I figured it would cost only a couple of grand," Falcoabramo said Thursday, "but it's been very expensive."

Disputes between upstairs and downstairs neighbors are common in older buildings such as Sherwood Square, where associations hadn't adopted rules regulating tile. It is unusual, however, for disputes to take this long or cost this much, experts say.

The problem of noise between floors developed in the mid-1990s when owners began ripping out carpets and installing tile for aesthetic reasons. Until then, developers provided carpets, so noise wasn't an issue. Developers now use construction methods in new projects that provide more insulation between floors.

Georgoulis, who works at a car dealership, said she specifically sought the board's permission to install tile before buying the unit.

Falcoabramo was at that board meeting but said she didn't know to object to allowing tile above her. She began filing complaints even before Georgoulis moved in, calling police about the "noisy" tile installer.

Georgoulis denied all her neighbor's assertions.

"I wear sweat socks inside. I don't even wear slippers [because] my feet swell from the shoes I wear during the day," she said. "I don't move furniture; I injured my shoulder in a car accident and can't. Besides, it would scratch the tile."

Why didn't she put her apartment up for sale earlier and avoid the headaches?

"I felt this is my home, I went through the [$5,600] expense of putting down tile and fixing it up so I could live here forever. I was fighting for my home," she said.

Falcoabramo said she does not believe her neighbor is as ill as she claims.

"I have carpeting and have allergies and asthma, too," she said. "Carpeting doesn't cause allergies; it's the housekeeping that does."

Falcoabramo, meanwhile, has advice for anyone buying in a condo building with more than one floor.

"Look at the structural drawings, especially in older condos," she said, to make sure there is insulation between floors.