We were so disappointed with this property and are baffled as to how it has received so many positive reviews. In summary, it’s not suitable for the number of guests advertised, it’s not suitable for families, many areas were not clean (including out of date food and mouse droppings in the kitchen cupboard) and the host was unhelpful and unapologetic. We are still awaiting the small refund promised. Would not recommend it. Full details are below:
House Not Suitable: This house isn’t big enough for 11 people. People in one bedroom need to pass through another bedroom (with three double beds and a fold out bed) to use a bathroom at night. This doesn’t work with a party of adults and young children with different bedtimes. The kitchen table only sits eight. There is no sitting room other than a couch on the landing that sits about five people. Two bedrooms connect directly to this landing, so it wasn’t usable in the evenings once children were sleeping as even low conversation could be heard in the adjoining bedrooms. The only place to ‘relax’ and chat in the evenings was at a small kitchen table.
Cleanliness: Some parts of the house were quite dirty on arrival. Worktops, the hob, crockery, dirty shelves in the fridge and at least one cupboard with lots of mouse droppings!! (Host response - “maybe an odd mouse or two can get in as is normal in any farmhouse across the country”). No apology or even shock at the idea that there is faeces in his kitchen!? We had to spend over an hour cleaning the kitchen on arrival before we felt comfortable cooking in it (and even then, it was lacking suitable cleaning equipment.
Gone-off Food: The fridge and cupboards had food left (we assume) by previous guests, much of it out of date, including gone-off eggs and milk. (Host response - “On Airbnb it is generally looked at as a positive to leave supplies in the fridge for incoming guests”). Again, no apology. We had a big job going through all that food to try to find space for ours. We didn’t feel comfortable dumping or eating the food that wasn’t ours, which left little space for our own food. With the mouse droppings in one cupboard, we had to leave food out due to lack of space - not ideal in a house with a mice.
Outdoor Safety: We had some safety problems, with an unsatisfactory response from the host. Young children were playing at the side of the house and came across some long pieces of barbed wire. A large roll of barbed wire was covered in cow dung and within 1m of a ride-on toy tractor. Some cows were also in this area, with no fence to keep children away from the cows. A digger arm blocked the cows from coming into the driveway but wasn’t much good for blocking children (Host Response - “Please tell them not to, that area isn’t in the listing and isn’t child friendly. The house is a very large “farmhouse” meaning it’s on a quiet farm and animals and equipment are nearby but are not listed and out of bounds.”). Note the barbed wire with cow dung was in the yard that formed part of the listing. This accommodation probably isn’t suitable for family groups.
Bedroom Lock: We also had the problem of an upstairs bedroom locking itself (like another review mentioned), but thankfully no children were in it when it locked itself. I think the root cause is an USA-style door latch where a small lever was moved on the inside (perhaps by one of the children in our party) and the next time the door is shut, it locks and needs a key to open. This type of lock is standard in the USA but is not familiar in Ireland. A key should have been available. I found a collection of around 40 keys but none opened the door. The host wasn’t contactable by phone (USA number listed as the contact number; unanswered) but the host did send a cleaner around a few hours later with a key for the locked bedroom. I had picked the lock in the meantime. This delayed bedtimes and caused a bit of inconvenience for the family. This had been reported to the host in previous reviews but he never bothered fixing it or supplying the key in case it happened again.
Projector Not Working: There is no TV. The projector didn’t work for us. It has a Netflix app and YouTube. Neither would play. Content from an iPhone (Netflix app and Disney plus app) refused to AirPlay to a projector due to DRM restrictions. Don’t rely on the host’s advice about the projector.
Still waiting on small Refund: Overall, we were unhappy with the quality and cleanliness of the accommodation. The host offered a €50 refund (a mere 3% of our total charge) when we reported the lack of cleanliness which hasn’t yet arrived, a week after we checked out. This missing refund is just another example of the marketing not living up to the reality.