This place has so much potential and I will start with the positives, the location and the price. It was nice to have coffee and snack bars on our first morning provided by the host. But for the negatives... hats off to whoever took the photographs of this place, they made it look a million times nicer than it was, they were clearly taken a while ago as the furniture was slightly different.
Smell
When we arrived at the property we were met by a, “catch in your throat, linger in your nostrils”, kind of damp smell. Inside the property didn’t smell fusty but unfortunately the deck outside did, so despite that being one of the main reasons we chose this place, we never sat out there. The view on the deck is completely obstructed by neighbouring trees anyway. My husband only has 30% efficient sense of smell and even he could smell the stench.
Problems
The first time I went into the bathroom the door handle came away in my hand and so we were never able to close the door. Lovely, especially when the bathroom door is in the kitchen.
We don’t know if the place had been empty for a while or if the cleaner just needed an update to her glasses but the place was not clean... which was particularly concerning in these COVID times. We had booked an extra day in advance of our arrival to be extra cautious which we were very glad we did. The surfaces and toilet looked to have been cleaned but things like the baseboards, windowsills, kitchen cupboards, fridge, lampshades, cobwebs in every corner clearly hadn’t seen a cloth in months. The wine glasses had evaporated wine at the bottom and even flies in them.
Other general amenities that were missing were: a full length mirror, a hairdryer, a kettle, softer lighting options, TV, chest of bedroom drawers. Things to fix: unclog the bathroom sinks, the leaky kitchen tap, the kitchen light that flickers when the coffee machine heats up.
Sleep
I don’t understand why you wouldn’t have a curtain in the bedroom. There was a sign insisting the porch light be kept on 24/7, which was very annoying because it shone straight into the bedroom, the cellular blind that wasn’t the full width of the window was a poor attempt to block out light and we ended up hanging a blanket from (ironically) the curtain hooks that a pole would usually sit on.
The bed sheets were covered in bobbles and they even had holes in them. The bed was soft and we both had stiff necks every day.
I thought there was damp on the ceiling but on further inspection I realised that it was in fact a couple of shoe prints where someone had splatted a spider, which was still there, right above the bed...
The floorboards from the level above are very creaky so we were often woken up by the people upstairs from 6.30am onwards.
To top it off, towards the end of the week construction was done on the lower decking during the day, while my husband was on work calls and a yellow “Caution” tape appeared in the grounds, with tools left on the lower deck. I happened to be leaving so was asked, “if it was ok to do some demolition”, by who I only assume was the upstairs neighbor. I said they would need to check with my husband as he was on calls, they never spoke to him but started anyway.
It was so frustrating to stay somewhere that could so easily be made immensely better with just a day’s worth of TLC and attention to detail.
We ended up leaving early and staying elsewhere for our last 2 days in Seattle.