We stayed 5 days in Lish's apartment and overall it was a great experience. As a host, Lish was very friendly, informative and most importantly, not intrusive. Upon greeting us, she gave us a tour of the apartment, followed by many ideas for places to eat/visit and tips for navigating the city. She was very quick to respond throughout our visit from when our flight landed to when we left. She was especially accommodating when she let us leave our luggage in the mud room past checkout time so that we may enjoy the gap between checkout and our flight without having to drag our luggage everywhere.
The place is beautiful, looks exactly as it does in the pictures. It is conveniently located just a few minutes' walk from the TTC, supermarkets and a bunch of restaurants. The fireplace was great as it heated up the apartment pretty well when we needed an extra boost to the central heating system. The apartment was very clean with enough storage space to stow your luggage and clothing so that they didn’t need to be all over the living room floor. The stove, vent and cooking utensils were great. The full sized refrigerator, variety of cooking spices, filtered water pitcher and super-fast Wi-Fi were things that are nice to have but sometimes overlooked by Airbnbs. There were plenty of other amenities that we did not use such as laundry machines, dish washers, ground coffee, tea, and even a first aid kit.
As people who are usually very weary/reluctant to book basement apartment Airbnbs, my girlfriend and I gave this one a try due to how nice it looked and the positive reviews and it did not disappoint. The ceilings were low and floors creaked a bit, however we expected this going in so it wasn't a deal breaker (basement apartment + previous reviews). I'm 5'10 and washing dishes wasn't too comfortable. Besides those and the small windows, we did not feel like we were in a basement at all.
Our only real complaint about the living space is that we felt there was quite a bit too many pieces of furniture. As a place listed for 2 guests, there were significantly more chairs than people to fill them. It made us feel like the space was smaller than it needed to be and we ultimately rearranged some of the furniture so the place felt a bit less cluttered up. Again, we saw this in the photos of the apartment and fully expected this going in.
If you do plan to cook something that produces a LOT of smoke, we advise that you open a window or two towards the back of the apartment and have the air flow through. While the vent is very good, it wasn’t able to handle a lot of smoke and we managed to set off the fire alarm while cooking a steak.
Overall, the place was clean, beautiful and conveniently located and Lish was a great host. We would recommend her place and would definitely consider staying there once more should we visit Toronto again.