If the secret to happiness is lowering your expectations, please do so before renting.
This cabin was "fine", once you worked out the kinks with the furnace, and got over your initial frustrations.
Here is why you should lower your expectations:
The furnace is...hard to predict. The first night we woke up terribly cold, the second night we woke up sweating because it was so hot.
The blankets...the ones on the bed are thin (i.e. assuming you’ll get the heat right), and there are NO SPARE BLANKETS. (My expectation is that there would be extra blankets in a ski cabin.)
The kitchen has...no oven mitts. (Note to Northstar: if you don’t provide oven mitts, we are going to use wash cloths from the bathroom.) In addition, there is no salt, no pepper, no oil. And the knives are horrible.
The washer/dryer...has no laundry detergent.
The ski closet...has no key, despite a hook on the wall that says "ski closet key". (Note to Northstar: if you don’t provide a key to the ski closet, we are going to keep our wet skis in the house at night.)
One renters guide to the furnace:
- The tricky thing is that the thermostat is upstairs, but you really care what the temperature is downstairs when you’re sleeping. Since heat rises, it becomes a guessing game to figure out how to balance it.
- We set the thermostat to 64 at night (that meant the downstairs is 5-10 degrees cooler).
- We found that we had to leave all the bedroom doors open (ajar 6-12 inches is fine). This allows even air flow downstairs.
- We found that we had to mostly close the vents in the downstairs bedrooms. If you leave them open, you are so close to the furnace that you get very hot air, and lots of it.
- We found that we needed to cover vents in the laundry room and leave the laundry room door open (speculation as to why: the laundry room can be a very different temperature, and that is the wall that the thermostat is on, so it can lead to strange thermostat behavior).
- Use the ceiling fan when you can...this will help distribute the heat in the upstairs more evenly.
- DO NOT use the gas stove. This will cause the upstairs to warm up tremendously, and the downstairs to be quite cold.
I have to give credit where it is due: the WiFi is actually pretty fast; there was an issue with the fridge and a minor plumbing issue, both of which the maintenance team fixed it in a matter of hours.