Things we liked: Lake, dock, fishing, swimming, diving board!, fire pit, kitchen, deck, remodeled parts of the home
Things we disliked:
VERY dirty, odd floorplan, un-remodeled rooms, no WIFI, no bedsheets or towels?
I'll be honest... our first impression of the house wasn't great. Externally, the house is pretty beat up. It's dirty and heavily covered in spiderwebs and bugs and the front yard is a mess. The back screen porch is worn and dirty and several screens are broken. Internally, the house is partly remodeled. The kitchen was nice with new appliances, and the living room, main bathroom and one bedroom are recently updated. The other two bedrooms and bathroom are a different story. The carpet is very old and dirty and the floorplan is bizarre (you have to walk through one bedroom to get to what's supposed to be the master suite).
As we typically do when we arrive at a rental house, we began to wipe down the key areas with Clorox wipes. It was extremely dirty (I’m talking BLACKNESS on the Clorox wipes). The refrigerator, although brand new, was a mess on the inside with remnants of prior spills on the shelves. I happened to open the oven and there were two cooked pork chops sitting on a broiling pan from the previous occupants. It was as if it had not been cleaned.
The first morning, I was up early and walked down to the dock, only to find it completely infested with annoying Mayflies (obviously not the owner’s fault). I cleaned them all off with a broom and we got three good days on the dock before they came back with a vengeance. That said, the dock was GREAT! We caught some bass and catfish and tons of blue gill. The kids loved the diving board and swam all the way to the bridge on tubes.
At the end of the day, we made the best of it and it turned out to be a decent vacation. But there is a LOT of untapped potential in this property that made our stay less enjoyable than it could have been. My advice to the property owners would be (most importantly), hire a GOOD cleaning service and hold them accountable for deep cleaning the home between renters. It’s a simple thing to do and it speaks to the pride in ownership as a property owner. I’d also recommend finishing off the last two bedrooms and bathroom (new carpet or laminate wood floor and some paint will make a huge difference). Lastly, you HAVE to add WiFi (it’s one thing to not supply WiFi if there is solid 4G service in the area, but people want to have connectivity these days).
