I stayed in Marie's house for a couple of months, me and some friends occupied the whole place and divided the bedrooms between us. Marie was very helpful and she will make sure you are never out of cleaning supplies or clean sheets or towels.
The place has everything that is needed (expect silverware, so be sure to bring some if you can), although it is not luxurious and pretty small (the only common areas are the kitchen and the hallway/living room). We all knew each other so that wasn't too much of a problem, although the walls are paper thin and you can hear everything that happens in the other rooms (especially from the kitchen and hallway).
The commute to downtown isn't bad, especially when you're able to catch one of the buses that takes you to the t station in a couple of minutes (the whole thing takes 30-45 minutes). However, when the buses aren't running as frequently it's a 15-20 minute walk to the t station, and the t ride to downtown it's around 17 minutes (although the trains aren't as frequent on weekends and out of rush hours).
All in all, it was a cheap solution for the couple of months that we needed the place for and our stay was comfortable.