A Sound Solution For Your Walls Without All the Demo

This post is in collaboration with National Gypsum PURPLE XP®. #askforpurple

After completing the renovation of our laundry / mudroom at Tree House, we celebrated like any other person – with a load of laundry (ha)! All was well, and then the spin cycle started. Whirr, whirr, whirrr. Although we installed the same machines we have (and love) in our Chicago home, we were surprised at how the sound carried in a different setting. Whirrr! We were snuggled into the couch at the time, winding down after a day of DIY. Finally, Scott got up and shut the pocket door to the mudroom, and as he sat back down, we said to one another – almost to the second! – we should have installed that PURPLE sound proofing drywall. (I couldn’t make that up if I tried; yes, our renovation motivated brains immediately went to drywall.)

If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, in the summer of 2017, some of you might remember that we renovated the garden apartment (a lower level rental unit) to our Chicago home. During that time, we reconfigured the kitchen layout, and we took advantage of having the walls opened to the studs and ran new electrical and plumbing, among a few other updates. When it came time to patch everything back up, we used National Gypsum PURPLE High Impact® XP® drywall to rental-proof the apartment, a product I learned about during a visit to the National Gypsum headquarters a few months before. I’ve said it before but it’s worth mentioning again: although it may seem that drywall is a somewhat mundane concept, it’s ironically the most exciting stage in any of our home renovation projects! It’s a huge turning point during the chaos that is renovation.

Back to our mudroom for a second. To be fair, we did install PURPLE drywall. We loved it so much during the garden renovation, that it was one of the easiest decisions we made in our recent remodels. There are several PURPLE options available (see them all here!), and we chose the standard XP for our small room. But did you know there’s drywall that can drastically reduce sound from one room to another? It’s the SoundBreak XP, and we were kicking ourselves for not choosing that. Okay, and you know when you start talking about something out loud and then suddenly, you begin to see ads about your discussions, and you think how? It was as if our friends at National Gypsum overheard our conversation, because not long after that evening on the sofa, they told us about their latest product launch – the SoundBreak XP Retrofit^® Board!

While installing drywall is typically a process that happens during new construction, SoundBreak XP Retrofit is a sound-damping product that can be installed over existing interior gypsum board (aka drywall) where noise from adjacent rooms is a concern. At 5/16″ thin, it’s, well, thinner than traditional drywall – as thin as a pencil! And like all PURPLE products, it resists moisture, mold and mildew and can stand up to everyday abuse.

Here’s why we’re obsessed with this new product. If you’re on the hunt for a solution to reduce noise between rooms (think: a bedroom, nursery or media room), SoundBreak Retrofit can be installed without disruptive demolition! Instead, the process for installation will look like this, in a nutshell (and here’s a step-by-step video, if you’d like to see!):

• Removal of trim moldings
• Removal of outlet and vent covers
• Mark studs
• Fasten SoundBreak Retrofit with screws over existing drywall
• Tape, mud + paint
• Re-intall trim moldings

This product has us eyeing a few places around our home where we could use the sound barrier. Lucy’s nursery. Our in-home workshop. The bathroom(s). No matter what, we’ve already agreed that we’ll be using SoundBreak XP when we renovate our Tree House bathroom (it’s a little too close for comfort to the main living and dining spaces, you know?), but we’re considering it for our first floor bathroom in Chicago, too!

Is there a room (or two or three) in your home that could benefit from SoundBreak XP Retrofit? If you’re interested in learning more, I shared my experience at the National Gypsum headquarters in this post and why quality truly matters, and you can see the full line of PURPLE drywall products right here. Before my tour with the National Gypsum team, I hadn’t given drywall a second thought, and we trusted our contractor to choose their own. Now? We always, always ask for PURPLE.