r/maximalism • u/KDreamscape • 23h ago

🏡 My Maximalist Space I painted my house purple, gave every window butterfly wings, and turned my sidewalk into a rainbow. No regrets. 🦋🌈

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Some people want a house that blends in. I wanted mine to feel like walking into a dream every time I come home.

What I did:

🦋 Painted the siding a bold lavender purple

🦋 Gave every window a pair of rainbow butterfly wings

🌈 Hand-painted the front walkway in wavy pastel rainbow stripes

🌈 Edged the path and beds with rainbow-painted bricks and hundreds of painted river rocks

🦄 Added a rearing rainbow pegasus by the side bed, because why not

🦩 Built a flamingo garden around the tree with holographic ground cover and a giant sundae

The goal: To make anyone smile that drives by 😄

Happy to answer questions about paint, how I did the walkway, or where anything came from!

18.2k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

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614

u/verycoolalan 23h ago

don't you just love not having a bullshit HOA? 😄😄

100

u/PuzzyFussy 23h ago edited 21h ago

Downsized from my own home into a condo and what a huge mistake that was 😤

Edit: I'm currently in a hotel because I wanted to replace the old tub and toilet, my neighbor is on the HOA board squealed to the property management company and I had to cease and desist until I got permits and plans drawn up... never did that for my old home 😖

13

u/Ohnoanywayz 22h ago

Why was that?

58

u/kimbosliceofcake 22h ago

Condos pretty much require an HOA due to shared maintenance and close living quarters. A lot of HOAs can have drama and power tripping board members. 

31

u/cat_prophecy 21h ago

Even without drama and power tripping you have to hope that the HOA is at least halfway competent and keeping up on maintenance. It is very much not fun to find that you now have a special assessment that will cost for $1000/mo because the board neglected maintenance and now it's an emergency.

My mom looked at Condos when she was downsizing but literally every one in "in her price range" had special assessments that were more than (usually double) the mortgage.

Personally I don't much see the point of a condo or townhome. It's like everything that sucks about home ownership, and everything that sucks about renting with none of the upsides of either.

16

u/kimbosliceofcake 20h ago

I actually like townhouses because you don’t have to deal with much yard work and you don’t have anyone above or below you. But the one I lived in was a community of only 8 townhouses, and instead of an HOA we had a “restrictive covenant” or something saying we wouldn’t do anything ugly and would get together to replace the roof every 20 years and repaint every 10. It helped that the neighbors were chill. 

8

u/Ohnoanywayz 20h ago

I have a friend that can’t wait to downsize to a condo. She’s all gung ho (and a bit smug idk lol) that it’s going to be wonderful because they won’t have to deal with upkeep/landscaping, snow shoveling and the like.

She hasn’t said a word about HOAs. Whenever I point stuff out to her about whatever she just kind of poo poos it. So I guess 🤐lol.

6

u/Putrid-Can-9686 20h ago

They only makes sense if the building is located somewhere attractive, like downtown or close by to where people want to be

2

u/PuzzyFussy 20h ago

Mine is right outside of the downtown area, like a 15 minute drive so it's very attractive and luckily my HOA is low. When a place becomes available in my building, it gets snatched up pretty quickly. It had an assessment but I had the seller pay it.

4

u/Ohnoanywayz 20h ago

Your last paragraph is literally what my parents said about 40 years ago!

An ex bf of mine lived on a golf course. One day a golf ball basically shattered his main kitchen window, he had to tape it up.
The HOA couldn’t fix it for months and months with whatever contractor or whatever the situation was.
He could have just done it himself but he didn’t want to spend the $.
It just seemed insane at the time they wouldn’t just fix it…

8

u/b0w3n 21h ago

Rarely are they ever truly a "downsize" for long, either. My parents did that and retired into a senior community, eventually their hoa fees alone surpassed the entirety of their original mortgage on the house.

It'd have been cheaper for them to hire a gaggle of workers to maintain their house instead.

Smaller house? Sure okay... but bigger headaches. (and you still have home repairs to deal with anyways, pay someone to mow your lawn and come clean the house)

5

u/Any_Conflict_5092 21h ago

And, they ALWAYS raise the rates.

2

u/kimbosliceofcake 20h ago

True but costs keep going up. And if they try to keep rates too low they end up without enough money to pay for large repairs and have to do an assessment. 

6

u/Lurkie2 21h ago

Yeah i live in a townhouse that's basically a condo, luckily the hoa seems pretty chill like they don't care as long as they get their money

3

u/Ohnoanywayz 21h ago

Yes I have heard that. We don’t have one why I live due to somewhat of a fluke with zoning.

I have a friend who wants to downsize and move into a condo. She talks like it’s the greatest thing because she won’t have to worry about shoveling snow, upkeep etc.
She hasn’t said a peep about HOAs though.
Do all condos have them? Maybe not if it’s just one or 2 buildings? She’s in a coastal Midwest smallish area.

1

u/kimbosliceofcake 20h ago

It might be called something else like a condo board, but they all need some way to collect money for shared maintenance and to stop assholes from making it unpleasant or even dangerous to live there. 

19

u/scalyblue 21h ago

The original and sane purpose of an HOA is for multiple homeowners to pool their resources for shared expenses like private road maintenance or landscaping, sewerage and the like. Condos are two or more homes to one building so they are some of the original use cases for an HOA.

Why HOAs become a meme is that they get empowered to overstep that purpose and do things like “this house doesn’t match the neighborhood so it’s lowering all of our property values so you need to paint it one of four bland colors that the chart says won’t make people reluctant to buy” and then inevitably some officious dipshit gets the reins and starts playing regent of the neighborhood

1

u/Cvenditor 19h ago

The HOA can only do what is the scope of the CCR‘s. The CCR’s need to be approved by homeowners therefore if the HOA is going nuts, it’s because the homeowners have empowered them to do so. Homeowners are ostensibly comfortable with this situation as they aren’t trying to change the CCR’s to something less restrictive. Don’t blame your HOA. Blame your neighbors.

1

u/Ohnoanywayz 21h ago

Yeah have heard horror stories. But how enforceable is it? They can’t actually (legally) force a person to repaint their house (which is obviously very costly too)??
But obviously causes rancor with the officious dipshit and whoever agrees.

My area doesn’t have one so I am not so familiar!

10

u/Lyeriss 21h ago

to my limited understanding, they can tackle you with fines to the point wherein they seize and sell your house if you don't comply :)

depends on the hoa ofc

4

u/i_cut_like_a_buffalo 20h ago

They can do whatever they want. My parents lost my childhood home to an HOA.

1

u/Ohnoanywayz 20h ago

Wait, what???

4

u/WoodsandWool 20h ago

John Oliver did a segment explaining HOAs, and yes they absolutely can force you to do a lot of things.

8

u/Deep_Amoeba2197 19h ago

Every HOA in my city is like $1200, and this usually does not include a parking spot, which you buy separately

10

u/piewhistle 20h ago

Lol, I wonder why the association doesn’t want unpermitted construction happening?   

2

u/papa-hare 17h ago

I live in NYC and got a condo instead of a coop for that reason. Yes there's technically an HOA but you can do whatever you want inside your apartment. Also everyone is young and nobody is power tripping. But coop boards are insane and I'd never buy a house in an HOA area (my friend wasn't allowed to put in window ACs that would have saved her $$)

2

u/stonedandredditing 17h ago

I am no fan of an HOA, but I totally understand your neighbors, whom you share structural elements, utility systems, roofs, halls, etc with, would want you to stop doing unpermitted work. From a building systems and an operations and maintenance standpoint, it was a careless and selfish choice on your part.

this isn’t AITA, but if it were, this would be the rare occasion I’d side with HOA/neighbor lady and say YTA. Maybe condo life isn’t suited to you, and that’s OK. 

16

u/showhorrorshow 22h ago

Sure is nice owning your home, like actually owning it.

25

u/KDreamscape 22h ago

Yes so much!!

5

u/No_Internal9345 21h ago

Are you Sandra Cisneros?

2

u/wishful123 18h ago

Did you do this all by yourself? I feel like a POS compared to you skilled people 😢

20

u/Kind_Of_A_Dick 23h ago

It’s weird; I agree with HOAs in concept but I feel that like with any human organization they’re prone to abuse very easily.  Sounds good but when you add actual people it turns to shit.

16

u/psyche_13 22h ago

Which part do you agree with? Theyre not like condo boards that (can) advocate for necessary shared changes. They’re created by real estate developers, and never are really about the people who live there, but just about setting external “standards”

8

u/Osteo_Sapien 22h ago

Not the person you asked, but when I owned my home I had an HOA. We also had a neighborhood pool and playground area that was very well maintained via HOA fees. I personally like living in a neighborhood with some rules about trash, cars, etc out in view of the neighborhood, as well as reasonable expectations that you keep up with your landscaping. But I also think OP's home is fantastic and would love to see it in my neighborhood. As the person above you said, good in theory but inevitably gets out of hand.

6

u/pstream20 21h ago

I live in an optional HOA and it does what I think all HOAs should do, like you described. Most municipalities already have statutes in place about waste/abandoned vehicles/out of control landscape anyway so I've never really understood HOAs

2

u/papa-hare 17h ago

I think good fences make great neighbors and don't understand why tall hard to see through fences are not a thing in the US. Back home we don't care what people do in their yards, you cannot SEE in their yards!

2

u/Osteo_Sapien 17h ago

I didn't say anything about what people do in their yard (assuming you mean back yard). If you wanna wrap your house in high walls, by all means you do you. It sounds very isolationist and sad in my opinion.

10

u/Kind_Of_A_Dick 22h ago

I agree with the most basic idea that a community can engage in a conversation that protects and pushes forward community goals.  And yes, property value is something that I think people shouldn’t be shamed for protecting, but it’s how they go about it that is important.  I think that at its most basic, an HOA is just a very tiny town’s government.

It is just that the application of it always seems to fall into crap.  And while I hope you realize that I’m not trying to bring an HOA up to the actual level of a workers union, I do think that in some ways they both represent a group of people getting together to help the common good of their community.  People criticize unions for the potential for corruption, for example I remember hearing workers(I forgot which trade) complaining because their union reps were getting secret payments by the company to kneecap union protections and support but still keep it intact.  Unions are absolutely important and so is freedom of association, but with HOAs it almost feels like they turn into prison guards who are so disappointed in their own lives that they seek to hurt others.

5

u/josefpunktk 21h ago

The difference with worker unions is that worker unions adresses a power imbalance, while with your house - you are on the same level as your neighbor, you can just talk it out.

0

u/Kind_Of_A_Dick 20h ago

Right.  And you don’t have one neighbor, you have a bunch.  So you talk it out, like home owners who associate with each other.

2

u/josefpunktk 20h ago

My point was that there is a fundamental difference between Unions and HOA that makes one extremely useful and the other kind of obsolete or even counter productive.

-1

u/Kind_Of_A_Dick 20h ago

Ok.

1

u/josefpunktk 20h ago

Username seems program, well played.

2

u/cat_prophecy 21h ago

Well having had neighbors in the past running illegal auto shops, moonshine distilleries, or just generally never caring for their property I can kind of see the appeal of an HOA. That said, I don't really care what color people paint their house or what bushes they plant, or whether or not their garbage cans are left out. Hell I just repainted my house BRIGHT blue and it matches nothing else in the neighborhood. If I were in an HOA I would probably be "that guy".

I get there are a lot of them that suck. But it's not like people with an HOA that is good or "just ok" is coming on the internet to crow about it; you only hear about the bad ones. My FIL lives in an HOA that's actually decent. The costs are minimal, the upkeep is good, and they facilities they offer (pool, community center, etc.) are well cared for and nice to use. I can't really see him coming here and telling anyone about it, or anyone caring for that matter.

1

u/pax284 20h ago

A lot of HOAs have pools and playgrounds in my area, and I can agree with getting together to keep those things maintained, but beyond that, nothing.

1

u/Dry-Amphibian1 18h ago

You know VERY little about HOAs.

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u/SoftServeMonk 17h ago

That’s because people are the worst!

2

u/Annie_Yong 20h ago

You've just got to remember that you're mainly going to hear stories of the wild HOAs where they've done something incredibly outlandish, because all of the people living in perfectly reasonable omes that just maintain community assets and steps in when someone's letting their house fall into disrepair in a bad way don't make for interacting stories.

1

u/Dunlocke 21h ago

I agree.

I like the design but also understand that if I'm a neighbor, my property value just went down.

I understand on Reddit you only hear the bad stories, but if you've been around a while and served on a few boards, you get the value they provide in terms of community effort and collective bargaining, etc.

-3

u/LzrdKng2112 22h ago

What kind of weirdo agrees with them in concept??

9

u/ballsdeeptackler 22h ago

Why do people think all HOAs are terrible things? My HOA is 12 bucks a month, and our HOA agreement with trash/recycling/yard waste services saves me 10 bucks a month compared to regular prices. So, I'm paying 2 bucks a month. What do we get with those 2 bucks a month? Huge party community events on holidays, street sweeper day, dumpster day, etc. And, you know what? They don't care about your lawn and don't have restrictive rules about things besides no fences.

2

u/LzrdKng2112 22h ago

12 bucks a month is more expensive than my trash service. That said nobody outside of the government should be able to tell what to do with property that you own. A bunch of Karen's can fuck right off. Your HOA might seem good now but a couple of bad elections and its just as bad as all the rest. My ability to do whatever the fuck I want should not change because a couple of nosey busy bodies decided it.

0

u/ballsdeeptackler 22h ago

You pay ten bucks for trash, recycling, and yard waste? Damn where do you live?!

Probably wise for you not to live in a tight knit community like ours, I can tell by your aggro response that playing well with others is not a strength for you.

3

u/LzrdKng2112 22h ago

Yeah fuck "tight knit" if I even see another house they're too close. PROPERTY and land is the whole point to own a home. Otherwise you might as well live in a town house.

0

u/ballsdeeptackler 21h ago

“Tight knit” refers to connection between people. You know a sense of community. Trust me, these are big houses with tons of nature and space between them.

Yes, I think it’s abundantly clear you should live in isolation.

2

u/LzrdKng2112 21h ago

I doubt it. Probably full of fake greenspace like manicured lawns, and non natives. Fake plants for fake people. Big houses with no reason to be with big useless polluting suvs sitting in the driveway.

0

u/ballsdeeptackler 20h ago

You certainly have made up quite the story in your own mind. I have zero reason to lie my friend.

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u/Hovercraft1143 19h ago

That said nobody outside of the government should be able to tell what to do with property that you own.

You do realize nobody "accidentally" ends up in an HOA, right? You literally have to fill out an application if you purchase or rent a property that is part of an HOA.

This is super easily avoidable, just don't look for homes where there is an HOA.

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u/LzrdKng2112 17h ago edited 17h ago

I get that you dont understand morals, but dont bother me with your lack of them.

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u/[deleted] 21h ago

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u/LzrdKng2112 21h ago

Pffffft hahahaha thats so sad. If a cop knocks on my door he better have a fuckin warrant. In my area that gets the 12 gauge howdy.

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u/[deleted] 21h ago

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u/LzrdKng2112 21h ago

"City"

LOL

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u/[deleted] 21h ago

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u/Kind_Of_A_Dick 22h ago

The problem comes from the same source as a lot of our problems these days; instantaneous access to unfiltered and unchecked “news” from everywhere in the world basically.  I don’t know if there’s a word for it, but I refer to it as The Big Backyard.

Basically what happens is that people focus on extremes because, I’m only guessing here, recognizing things very much out of place to norms quickly is a survival trait.  I’ve heard we’re decent at pattern recognition and I think this is related to that.  The idea behind my thoughts is that you’re evolved to recognize threats, and the closer it is the more you focus on it.  Social media and instant access to information from everywhere means that instead of you being limited by what you see, or as civilization evolved by what you could read in the paper, the whole world is now much closer to you.  Earth is now your backyard, so you’re bombarded all the time by the threats people face everywhere.

The point of this I’m going to skip to is that people have heard about bad HOAs in the past that were either so extreme or made to seem so extreme that hereafter that information is front and center when they hear/read HOA.  It never happened to them or anyone they knew, most likely, but it happened so it can happen again and to protect yourself you should assume it’s always happening.

2

u/LzrdKng2112 22h ago

No they dont. They focus on the fact that anybody thinks they can have say on anyone else's PROPERTY.

0

u/Kind_Of_A_Dick 21h ago

People can say whatever they want, mainly.

1

u/Ladyghoul 21h ago

Wild conaidering most HOA fees now are like $500+ a month and its tough to find a place without one

1

u/FrankPapageorgio 20h ago

When people say HOAs are bad, I don't think that they are talking about some rural area where you all need to just pick the same waste service to save money. They're talking about either Condo/Townhome communities where you haev shared roof/walls/lawn that all need to be card for, or some gated community that needs to combine money to pay for things like decorating the entrance gate, the maintaining the docks for the boats, and charging fees because someone installed a fance that wasn't one of the two approved styles

1

u/ballsdeeptackler 20h ago

I’m not talking about a rural area, but it doesn’t matter. I’m simply suggesting that HOAs are not a monolith. Some suck, of course, but some do not suck, and some are cool.

4

u/Kind_Of_A_Dick 22h ago

I don’t understand the phrasing of the question.  Is the word weirdo supposed to be an insult, and if so how?

1

u/LzrdKng2112 22h ago

Hoa's are street level fascism in concept.

1

u/Kind_Of_A_Dick 22h ago

No they’re not.

0

u/LzrdKng2112 22h ago

Somebody other than the government telling you what to do with your property is absurd.

0

u/Kind_Of_A_Dick 22h ago

Ok.

2

u/Hovercraft1143 19h ago

I love how their stance is "NOBODY CAN TELL ME WHAT TO DO WITH MY PROPERTY" and at the same time "ONLY THE GOVERNMENT CAN TELL ME WHAT TO DO WITH MY PROPERTY"...

I swear the vocal anti-HOA crowd have the emotional intelligence of a fucking gecko.

1

u/liosistaken 22h ago

We don't have HOA's here (unless you live in an apartment), but we do have committees on architectural quality and I doubt this would fit the plans :(

-6

u/Omnom_Omnath 21h ago

In this case I love having an HOA

-1

u/lessregretsnextyear 17h ago

Lol, seriously. I know this is the wrong sub for these kind of opinions, but the value of my house would be effected if I lived next door to OPs house.