First the good: The location is great. London has a big heart, but this apartment is definitely in it. The apartment is spacious, and it has 2 floors which allows for some privacy if you are together with another family. Two full bathrooms and an extra toilet make it also convenient for a larger group like ours (6 people). Very nice spacious kitchen with new’ish appliances: good fridge, stove with oven (top heat only) and a microwave.
For the location, season and the size of the apartment, the price was very good!
The downsides and opportunities for improvement:
Firstly, if I had known all the downsides, I would’ve still chosen the apartment. I am sharing these, because a lot of them are fixable.
The noise: there is a compressor (somewhere) that comes on and off every few minutes and when it does, it makes noise loud enough that it is really annoying at night. It’s not loud enough to bother during the day. The windows are old (single glaze) and they barely filter any outside noise too.
The kitchen wasn’t equipped for 6 people – not enough cups, plates etc. Not enough pots. Most of the ones that are there are severely damaged Teflon, which is actually toxic.
The cleanliness: the apartment, the sheets and the kitchen were generally looking clean, but my socks were dirty from the floor in minutes and the strings to open and close the blinds were sticky (we used them through a paper towel to avoid touching them).
The Internet was very slow – especially the upload speed – it took minutes to upload a photo and videos would typically time out with an error.
Worth to note that both bathrooms are upstairs and the one with the shower is an on-suite, so access to it is a bit a nuisance as you must go through someone’s bedroom. For sharing, It would’ve been better if that bathroom’s door was to the hallway rather than the bedroom. The other bathroom has a bathtub, and it could’ve been used for shower if it had a curtain installed (I would suggest that).
Some disrepair included two holes in the ceiling (living room and one of the bedrooms), and one of the roof-emergency exit doors had a big gap to the outside as the door was chipped along the bottom edge. I would hate to speculate as to how that happened, but if there were any rats outside, they could easily get in.
4th floor, no elevator, very narrow staircase to get in.
The floor is very uneven throughout the apartment – I guess an old building.
