![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Hey, want to feel dumb?
Oct. 4th, 2020 03:52 pmRent an AirBnB for a month without staying in it overnight first. It worked for me! I felt dumb as a rock.
In the photos, the cottage is standing alone in the middle of a peaceful glade. When you get there, you'll discover that it's built right next to a house, and the two structures are connected by a long room, which has been divided in half by a curtain. Your bed is against this curtain. At any time, the owner could enter from the house, reach an arm around the curtain, and turn the page of the book you're reading in bed. Exciting! Alfred Hitchcock would approve.
Reading a book in bed might not work anyway, though. There are no bedside tables, so when you're ready to sleep you'll have to fling the book you're reading onto the floor. The other books in the house might sense this mistreatment and form into a semi-humanoid paper monstrosity at four in the morning and crush you. Did I mention that there are a whole lot of books in this place? They're of the "vintage" kind, meaning they're much more attractive to look at than they are interesting to read. The cottage really belongs to the books, not you.
They fill the shelves, and stacks of them occupy at least a third of every flat surface in the cottage, with the exception of the kitchen island. You will need to tuck them under the table to get some space of your own. The landlord, by the way, is not used to long-term occupants. In the second week, she will ask to come into the cottage and borrow several of her own books for some project that can't possibly wait. What are you gonna do; say no?
Here's another thing that got old after a few days: The ant invasion. Every day, thousands of ants ran a full-court-press on the garbage can by the door. They marched right over the poison. I spent hours killing them, wiping up their trails; it did nothing. You can expect occasional ants in the country, but this? Bad weather sealing paired with bad placement: The garbage can and the kitchen sink are right next to the dutch door. To keep the ants from sending lines all over the kitchen I had to remove the trash bag - not just dump the trash, but replace the bag itself - at least once a day, and keep all the counters absolutely spotless at all times. On the second week I ran out of bags, and since the owner couldn't supply them when I asked, I bought more in town.
Most nights when I did dishes, leaning over the sink, the ants would start marching up my clothing. For a while afterwards, every few minutes, I would feel an ant march onto my neck, and I'd pick it off and kill it. I grew up in the woods and am no stranger to ants, but this was still an almost literal pain in the neck. If it's your own house, there are things you can do: Seal the doors, install better moulding, apply caulk and paint. Not with an AirBnB.
A rundown of other horrors:
The benches in the dining area appear to be made of two dead bears stretched out with planks on top. Move too quickly and they will pitch over.
The cabinet doors have no handles. Handles would ruin the visual appeal, or something. You open them with your fingernails.
The carefully framed photos of the garden obscure the fact that it's 30 feet from the main road. Most days of the week, if you're outside, you will hear and see cars and trucks regularly zooming past.
Noise is an issue generally. The windows are beautiful but thin. We got hours of chainsaw activity from the neighbors on several days. The worst was the gas-powered weedwacker that went all day on a Sunday while we were trying to nap inside the house. The only way to escape the sound was noise-cancelling headphones.
The wifi router had problems. I had to locate the box, use the security information to connect to it, and set the DHCP address lease time down to 24 hours from the absurd six months the owner had chosen. Why would you reserve addresses for an entire six months when new people are marching in and out of this cottage every day? I asked the owner. She said, "Oh, you fixed that? Thank you! I had no idea what was wrong."
We arranged a laundry day. I put in one load, then came out to swap it several hours later. The other tenant, renting somewhere else on the property, had moved my wool clothes into the dryer on high heat. It was halfway into the cycle when I stopped it. $250 worth of my wool clothing no longer fits me. Thanks, guy.
Ah, but hey, this is not just a litany of failures! Behold, there is one good thing about this place!
It makes a really upscale-looking backdrop for Zoom meetings. Arrange the laptop on the kitchen counter and have your meetings standing up, with the fireplace behind you, and people think you're in some kind of millionaire storybook house. You win!
In the photos, the cottage is standing alone in the middle of a peaceful glade. When you get there, you'll discover that it's built right next to a house, and the two structures are connected by a long room, which has been divided in half by a curtain. Your bed is against this curtain. At any time, the owner could enter from the house, reach an arm around the curtain, and turn the page of the book you're reading in bed. Exciting! Alfred Hitchcock would approve.
Reading a book in bed might not work anyway, though. There are no bedside tables, so when you're ready to sleep you'll have to fling the book you're reading onto the floor. The other books in the house might sense this mistreatment and form into a semi-humanoid paper monstrosity at four in the morning and crush you. Did I mention that there are a whole lot of books in this place? They're of the "vintage" kind, meaning they're much more attractive to look at than they are interesting to read. The cottage really belongs to the books, not you.
They fill the shelves, and stacks of them occupy at least a third of every flat surface in the cottage, with the exception of the kitchen island. You will need to tuck them under the table to get some space of your own. The landlord, by the way, is not used to long-term occupants. In the second week, she will ask to come into the cottage and borrow several of her own books for some project that can't possibly wait. What are you gonna do; say no?
Here's another thing that got old after a few days: The ant invasion. Every day, thousands of ants ran a full-court-press on the garbage can by the door. They marched right over the poison. I spent hours killing them, wiping up their trails; it did nothing. You can expect occasional ants in the country, but this? Bad weather sealing paired with bad placement: The garbage can and the kitchen sink are right next to the dutch door. To keep the ants from sending lines all over the kitchen I had to remove the trash bag - not just dump the trash, but replace the bag itself - at least once a day, and keep all the counters absolutely spotless at all times. On the second week I ran out of bags, and since the owner couldn't supply them when I asked, I bought more in town.
Most nights when I did dishes, leaning over the sink, the ants would start marching up my clothing. For a while afterwards, every few minutes, I would feel an ant march onto my neck, and I'd pick it off and kill it. I grew up in the woods and am no stranger to ants, but this was still an almost literal pain in the neck. If it's your own house, there are things you can do: Seal the doors, install better moulding, apply caulk and paint. Not with an AirBnB.
A rundown of other horrors:
The benches in the dining area appear to be made of two dead bears stretched out with planks on top. Move too quickly and they will pitch over.
The cabinet doors have no handles. Handles would ruin the visual appeal, or something. You open them with your fingernails.
The carefully framed photos of the garden obscure the fact that it's 30 feet from the main road. Most days of the week, if you're outside, you will hear and see cars and trucks regularly zooming past.
Noise is an issue generally. The windows are beautiful but thin. We got hours of chainsaw activity from the neighbors on several days. The worst was the gas-powered weedwacker that went all day on a Sunday while we were trying to nap inside the house. The only way to escape the sound was noise-cancelling headphones.
The wifi router had problems. I had to locate the box, use the security information to connect to it, and set the DHCP address lease time down to 24 hours from the absurd six months the owner had chosen. Why would you reserve addresses for an entire six months when new people are marching in and out of this cottage every day? I asked the owner. She said, "Oh, you fixed that? Thank you! I had no idea what was wrong."
We arranged a laundry day. I put in one load, then came out to swap it several hours later. The other tenant, renting somewhere else on the property, had moved my wool clothes into the dryer on high heat. It was halfway into the cycle when I stopped it. $250 worth of my wool clothing no longer fits me. Thanks, guy.
Ah, but hey, this is not just a litany of failures! Behold, there is one good thing about this place!
It makes a really upscale-looking backdrop for Zoom meetings. Arrange the laptop on the kitchen counter and have your meetings standing up, with the fireplace behind you, and people think you're in some kind of millionaire storybook house. You win!
