The apartment building is an excellent location and the inside of the flat is newly renovated.
My critique has to do with the owner’s poor communication style and disrespectful attitude.
Before we arrived in Florence, or the flat, we did not receive any communication informing us painting of the apartment building’s stairwells / common area walls was ongoing. We discovered this on arrival.
The building itself is several hundred years old so staircases are narrow and steep. This is standard and typical in Europe. However given how much painting was ongoing, it was impossible to walk up or down the stairs without getting paint on our clothes, hands, and luggage.
The workers arrived around 9am each day and stayed until approximately 6pm. Not only was the work loud, with everything heard through the walls, the ladders used for the work blocked the narrow staircases making it extremely difficult to enter or leave the premises safely.
The paint dust stuck to everything and aggravated my wife’s asthma.
After the first night, I contacted the owner and he offered a 10% discount. His response was fast but my point was that this was not about money. It was a courtesy issue and important to notify us of the situation and give us the opportunity to stay elsewhere. He responded this was a last minute decision from the building.
Whatever the case, with even three or four hours notice, we could have found another place to stay, and this was my main point of frustration. I feel like we were boxed in to staying there. Also, I’m of the opinion, that the owner could have simply refused to rent the space out until the work was complete.
On our last day at the flat, paint was all over the stairwell, and as hard I tried to avoid it, my hands were covered in paint, along with my pants. I had to duck under the workers ladder as dried old paint chips fell from the ceiling. When ducking I hit my back on the ladder.
I notified the owner that this happened and 24 hours later have yet to receive any type of response.
Lastly, the air conditioning unit is loud, and if it’s warm you may need to choose between a comfortable temperature in the room, or waking up to the sound of the air conditioner cycling. The owner should really provide a simple stand up fan as an alternative which is common in Italy and uses less energy than an air conditioner.