tl;dr: Just don't.
For context, I stayed here for 4 months to work downtown.
I'll start with the things I liked:
- Shelly was good about giving me privacy in my room
- She was good about knowing that I'm not as talkative as most of the other tenants that have come by
- She was good with chatting with tenants. A lot of tenants that have lived here liked to chat about their background and travels, and they seemed to enjoy talking to Shelly
- She makes space for you in the kitchen. If she's cooking and you come in, she asks if you need to use the stove or sink and will make space for you
- She will sometimes ask you if everything is okay and if you need anything
- There is a fish tank with water constantly running into it 24/7, which adds a nice ambient sound to the house
- The bathroom was quite clean for the most part
- During my stay I rented a bunch of instruments and played in my room at a very low volume. She saw them once and I was afraid she would ask me not to play music in the room, but she didn't say anything, which I appreciated
- She has a very cute dog who is very guarded and defensive at first, but if you win him over he will love you
Now the things that were not so good:
- The wifi is terrible. I've tried resetting it, but it just doesn't work. Sometimes tabs won't load and if I constantly turn my wifi on and off maybe it works eventually
- She yells. A lot. And I'm talking aggressive yelling, not the kind where some people just talk at a louder volume than others. She didn't yell at me, but at a family member who lives in the house. It was alarming at first but then I got used to it, which doesn't make it okay still. It usually happens between 7 and 9pm. If she was yelling in the basement, I would hear it all the way on the second floor. I am really surprised no one else has written about this in other reviews. This was by far the thing that made my stay most unpleasant. My suggestion is that this is not too much of an issue if you are here for travel, since you won't be in the house too much to hear it. But if you're like me and staying for 4 months, and you come back from work every day around 6 and want to just relax, it is terrible.
- She talks quite loud. One time it was midnight, I was trying to sleep, and she had another tenant come in so she showed her around. I was fine with that, maybe the new tenant could only come at this time, but I expected Shelly to speak a little more quietly, but no, she spoke as she normally would even though it was practically midnight. Or I thought maybe she could show the new tenant around at a more reasonable time the next morning, but nope. One time it was 11pm and I could hear her talking to someone all the way from the kitchen. I was too tired and grumpy to get out of bed so I texted her, and she quieted down, which was good. But still, it's more ideal if you don't have to say anything in the first place
- There is no laundry on site, but there are two laundromats quite close to the house
- The house is always so dark. I don't understand why. When I come home from work there are barely ever any lights on. You can turn them on, sure, but I wonder why she always keeps the house so dark.
- If you are staying in the room with the larger window, you will be sharing the same air vent as the bathroom. One time Shelly was bleaching the shower curtain in the bath tub and I could smell all of it in my room. I looked around and realized that the vent goes two ways: one to the bathroom and one directly to my room. If there's no particularly strong smell coming from the bathroom it's not an issue at all, you can't smell anything. But if bleach is involved, that's a whole other thing. I had a hard time sleeping that night because the smell was quite suffocating. This isn't necessarily her fault, just the way the house was built.
- The dish soap. Oh man, the dish soap. Around the second month I was living there, I noticed the dish soap color get lighter and lighter every time it was refilled. I then realized it's because she mixed it with water. A lot of water. Washing the dishes was extremely frustrating in that sense. Maybe her dish soap is too strong and she wants to dilute it a little, I get that, but it was more water than actual soap.
- Like any other listing where you have to share the space with the host, it comes with its own set of difficulties, but nothing out of the ordinary.