Maria has clearly put a lot of thought and care into provisioning the space. It has all the kitchen appliances, tools and utensils you could need, and she left plenty of towels, sheets and supplies for my month-long stay. The basement apartment is mostly as described.
Pros:
- Quiet neighborhood close to the river and parks
- Separate entrance, easy check-in and checkout
- The hosts were quite willing to help with anything, until I said I wanted to leave a week early (and I admit that I only used the location as an explanation, as I didn't have a car and getting around as much as I needed to was expensive and took a long time; I didn't mention all the other issues below — and I should have).
Cons:
- Far from downtown (~25 mins by car). If you have your own transport, this might not be an issue for you.
- Long walk to stores and restaurants (~20 minutes); see above.
- There's no dedicated workspace — this was misrepresented in the listing. There's a small dining table & hard chairs in the combination living/dining/laundry room. If you need to work there for any length of time, this isn't a comfortable setup.
- The mattress was extremely hard. If you like a very firm mattress, this one's for you.
- The combination air fryer/toaster set off the smoke alarm twice when I made light toast, so I was afraid to cook anything else. There's a smaller toaster you can plug in farther away from the smoke alarm.
- The wifi went out several times. I'm sure the hosts know this happens, as they've provided a backup network and password as well. They offered to contact a technician if I wanted one, but it was faster/more efficient to keep resetting the router. This was problematic when I was working, however.
- It was mostly quiet for my first two weeks, but when the hosts' grandchildren visited, it got quite noisy for a few nights.