My wife and I recently stayed at Jayson’s place with our two small kids. Overall, we enjoyed our stay, but the house, although beautiful and great value compared to other accommodation options in DC, still has some issues. Here are the honest pros and cons:
Pros:
- Location is very central
- Apartment is accurately portrayed in the listings, it is completely renovated and has a modern and airy feel
- Kitchen is pretty well stocked, although could use a few more cooking utensil (spatulas, ladles, etc.)
- Beds are large and comfortable, with many pillows.
Cons:
-The neighborhood is still a bit rough, especially at night. On our second night there, the barber shop a few houses down was burglarized at around 2am, and the police came by to question us about whether we had seen anything.
- Related to that, the front doors of the house (both main level and basement level) are glass, which means every person walking by on the street can see directly into the house, which is a bit uncomfortable and disconcerting, particularly at night time. The host should consider changing the doors or covering the glass to provide some basic privacy.
- Although newly-renovated, the house has a significant insect problem, with everything ranging from mosquitos, spiders, sugar ants, centipedes, roaches. The mosquitoes are particularly problematic, as there are breeding pools of them in the front lawn (we all got devoured by them during our stay there). In fairness, this is a problem throughout DC in the summertime, but there are still some common sense measures the host could take, such as installing screens on the entry doors.
- The overall cleanliness of the house is good, but due to the above-mentioned insect problem (which has clearly affected others staying prior to us) there are dead bug stains and remains all over the walls, especially in the downstairs bedroom. The cleaning crew of the house should definitely address this, as it’s quite gross.
- The AC system is not well designed, as the temperature sensor is on the ground floor, which means it switches off once the main floor is cooled, but the upstairs remains hot. It was a basically a sauna upstairs every night we slept there.
- Finally, the shower water pressure is very poor in the upstairs bathrooms (essentially a trickle), but strong in the downstairs bathroom, so better to shower down there.