We travel a lot and usually stay in vacation rentals vs hotels and I almost always give glowing reviews. However, this home was the worst place we have ever rented! From the moment we entered the downstairs door I smelled a musty odor. When going up the stairs to the main floor I immediately noticed that the lower banister railing was barely hanging by the bottom screws, the left banister was wobbly and the light in the staircase did not work. It was an accident waiting to happen. Then when I got upstairs I was so upset that I got tears. We were meeting family and hosting Christmas, and my vision of a beautiful holiday was crushed! The pictures that I saw on the website made the place look open and spacious, but they obviously staged the furnishings and used a special lens to photograph the rooms. You could barely move around and there was no way we could have had 10 gather the way it was set up. When the rest of our group arrived they were even more upset than I was. Rather than let it ruin our holiday we decided to rearrange the furniture and take some items to the lower floor. That gave us just enough room but it was CROWDED ( which is interesting because this home advertises that it sleeps up to 10). I will say that Amy, the property manager, responded quickly to my communication but did not resolve ANY of the issues (see below) that we had. Amy explained that the regular housecleaner was not available and that Amy was working remotely out of state. This explained some of the issues but in fact, Amy had earlier told me that the owner was doing his “annual inspection” of the house minutes before we arrived. That meant he was aware of, at the very least, the major safety issues in the stairway and did nothing to address them or even warn us about the hazard. Amy told me that after I checked out she would immediately refund my cleaning deposit which was $320 (a lot for a house of this size) but she only refunded $300. Listed below are the other issues we confronted. All in all, it was a very disappointing experience. I definitely would not recommend this rental!
Kitchen
*No trash bags
*No can opener
*No ice or trays (ice maker there but not hooked up)
*Disgusting sponge (it was falling apart and stunk) and no replacement to scrub pans
*Both spatulas were broken
*only 3 wine glasses for a place that advertises it sleeps 10
Bathrooms
*place for 10 people but only 4 towel hooks, no racks
*downstairs bathroom door latch not working (you think you have locked it but anyone can just open it from the outside since it does not latch)
*no heat vent in the downstairs bathroom so it was cold.
*downstairs bath had two bottles of conditioner but no shampoo
Downstairs
* no doormat on inside of door. With no path from the cars to back door (it was raining and snowing) it was impossible not to track mud and water in while unloading.
* No mop (did have 3 brooms/dusters) to mop up mud tracked in so we had to throw down a towel which got all muddy (as soon as we entered we took our shoes off).
* Huge musty smell, especially downstairs that may have come from washing machine? Had to light candles the whole time to mask the smell
* Walls plastered but not painted in downstairs “tropical “room.
* Downstairs bedroom (with “lounging area”) had no blanket. It was freezing! Thankfully we were not using one of the upstairs bedrooms so we stole the blanket from that full (they call it a queen) bed to put on our king.
* The largest downstairs bedroom was not as pictured in the listing. The bed was across from the TV, not the two “lounging” chairs. While there were small two chairs in the room, they were shoved into the far corner with an open-style large 3 tiered industrial towel shelve that pretty much blocked you from “lounging”.
* That downstairs bedroom was either freezing cold or stifling hot because when the heat came on it was super loud and blasted hot air, but when it went off it stayed off for a very long time.
* Carpeting on the stairs was super dirty ( which makes sense because there was no doormat inside the downstairs entry).
Upstairs bedrooms
* The upstairs bedroom on the right is billed as a queen. It does indeed have a bed frame that measures to be a queen but the frame around the entire mattress is several inches wide so the mattress that fits into the space is a full, not a queen.
* The couple who stayed upstairs decided to push the two full mattresses in the left room together. They were a bit surprised to find that only one of the beds had a top sheet! So…they borrowed the top sheet from the full in the other room, plus the bedspread, as the second bed had no blanket either!