I am actually still living here as of this review (2/24/03). Our lease runs out in August of this year, and I do not plan to stay.

First off, our one bedroom apt is quite large for a 1br in a complex. On the west side of Manchester you can find much larger apts in 2-family units, but those are often very old, which can lead to higher heating bills and repairs. Our apartment came with brand spanking new carpet, though the walls/ceilings showed signs of 20 years of occupancy. That's understood, though the plastering was obviously done by their shoddy maintenance staff (more on that later). The two things that drew us to this place over other similar units (Washington Park, etc) was that there is a separate dining room/kitchen/living room, unlike the other places which kind of combine those three. Often times you'll see the kitchen, then a dining room back to back with the couch/TV. This one has three separate rooms. The other thing was the enormous walk-in closet. All our friends are jealous of this...we don't even own a dresser. We have drawers in our waterbed, and everything else (including my toolbox, etc) fits in the closet. It's great.

The apt is pretty quiet, we can hear the people walking upstairs, but very rarely do we hear anyone adjacent to us or below us. In the summer you can always hear drunks staggering back from the bars late at night, but that comes with the territory of living in a complex.

Heat and hot water are included, which is nice, though we haven't even turned on the heat yet. There are hot water pipes running through our closet, so if we keep the closet door open it heats our whole bedroom. And we think the tenant below cranks his heat, because our floors are always warm. There is a wall-mounted AC unit, which cools the room ok in the summer, but struggles to cool our bedroom down the hall. Putting a fan in the hall fixed this. Also, make sure you find some sort of AC covering (we just hung a tapestry over it) during the winter, as the AC is not mounted very well and it gets very drafty once winter hits.

Parking is pretty good for us at least. Our apt is situated at the "back" of our building, so we park out behind it. There is usually tons of spots here, except when there's a snow parking ban, then it's every man for himself and we usually get bumped to another lot because we work late. The mail service seems to be good, but if you do use the back door all the time for entry to the building and you're expecting a package from UPS/FedEx, check the front door to the building, as that's where they'll leave your notice if they missed you. Took me a while to realize that at first. USPS will usually leave it for you in one of their bulk mailboxes, and leave a key for you in your box.

Now, the bads. The rent is reasonable ($815), though not cheap by any means. Most of our problems have stemmed from the maintenance dept. Our dishwasher began to leak a couple months after we moved in. It wouldn't leak every time, but on occasion we would wake up only to step in a large puddle. We called maintenance FOUR SEPARATE TIMES to fix this problem, but every time they said they couldn't get it to leak while they were there. I understand that, but surely they have spare units to give out when things break, but we never got one. To this day our dishwasher still leaks every 10 or so loads.

Then, there was the washing machine. Pinewood uses a card system through the company of Mac-Gray. The first month we were there, the dryer wouldn't work, so I called Mac-Gray and it was resolved within a few days. Then sometime in early December, the dryers wouldn't work at all. There are two washers and two dryers for each building, and both dryers were busted. I called SIX TIMES over a five-week span before it was resolved. I also called the main office, hoping they could also call Mac-Gray on my behalf, but I doubt they ever did. I had to pay to do my laundry at a laundromat, spending my time there instead of the apt I pay $815/month to live in. I was not pleased about this, but eventually it was fixed.

Then there are the pipes. Right below our bedroom window there is a large boiler-type machine, surrounded by a fence. This machine makes all sorts of noises, day and night, from clunking to minute-long whining to very loud BANGS, night and day. We've called the office on several occasions to have them fix this, and it seems like it'll go away for a week or two, then it'll be right back.

The last thing that makes me want to move out is the hot water. I get up at about 6:30, shower, then wake my wife up so she can shower. I usually get my whole shower in before the cold hits...but my wife often has to shower in cold/warm water. We don't know why this is. We thought maybe because there were so many people showering at the same time, but I'd like to think the building was set up to handle that. But then one Sunday I was showering at around noon and I was hit with cold water. How many people could there possibly be showering at lunchtime' Anyways, this is just another small thing that maintenace seems to not care about.

They are pretty good about snowfall lately, though I had to complain for a bucket of salt/sand to be placed at our back door, where we come in. There's one at the front door, but they often forgot about us in the back when it got icy. That was earlier in winter, and they've been much better about it lately.

So that's about it. This is our very first apartment, and I think we're going to try to get into a two-family on the west side of Manchester once our lease runs out here. A friend of mine just purchased one, and his tenants pay $850/month for a two-bedroom that's twice the size of ours...we're going to try for something like that.

If you have any questions about my review, please don't hesitate to e-mail at rjproulx@attbi.com.

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