Soundproofing - part 1

We live in a bungalow (one floor plus basement). It came with 3 bedrooms and one bathroom and my husband added a basement bedroom (with a full egress window) and a second bathroom.

We have four kids - 3 boys, 1 girl - so someone was always going to have to share a room. At one point, when we were renting out a room to international students, we had a triple bunk bed in the boys' room. 

That worked well until they were bigger and just needed more space to stretch out. We tried combinations of the girl plus her younger brother, the younger and middle brother, and the middle and oldest brother.

Middle (15) and oldest brother (17) is the best combination. Girl (12) has small room with big closet, youngest (10) has bigger room with double bed he will have to give up if we have overnight guests.

We decided to move to the basement bedroom in August 2019 as I thought the temperature would be cooler. It also meant we could reserve the basement bathroom as our own and not deal with the mess of boys missing the toilet upstairs (my poor daughter). 

We moved the two oldest boys into the master and made them each a loft bed with a desk under it. They each also have a separate closet and there's floor space left

In hindsight, could we have turned the basement playroom into two more bedrooms and put all the kids down there? 

That would've meant we'd have the upstairs, without people stomping above our heads past our early bedtimes (hubby sometimes starts work at 5 am and I can't sleep past 6 am). But the kids would've probably still been upstairs in the kitchen having second dinner so it may not have helped anyway.

So now we have noisy "upstairs neighbours" that sound like a herd of rampaging elephants. Elephants who are also able to cook and slam doors.

I'm searching for soundproofing solutions and thought I might as well share them here in case they're helpful to any other tired parents.

Stay tuned for a list of resources.