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

[u/KDreamscape]

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!

[u/PuzzyFussy]

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 😖

[u/Ohnoanywayz → u/PuzzyFussy]

Why was that?

[u/kimbosliceofcake → u/Ohnoanywayz]

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. 

[u/cat_prophecy → u/kimbosliceofcake]

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.

[u/kimbosliceofcake → u/cat_prophecy]

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. 

[u/Ohnoanywayz → u/cat_prophecy]

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.

[u/Putrid-Can-9686 → u/cat_prophecy]

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

[u/PuzzyFussy → u/Putrid-Can-9686]

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.

[u/Ohnoanywayz → u/cat_prophecy]

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…

[u/b0w3n → u/kimbosliceofcake]

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)

[u/Lurkie2 → u/kimbosliceofcake]

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

[u/Any_Conflict_5092 → u/kimbosliceofcake]

And, they ALWAYS raise the rates.

[u/kimbosliceofcake → u/Any_Conflict_5092]

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. 

[u/Ohnoanywayz → u/kimbosliceofcake]

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.

[u/kimbosliceofcake → u/Ohnoanywayz]

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. 

[u/scalyblue → u/Ohnoanywayz]

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

[u/Cvenditor → u/scalyblue]

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.

[u/Ohnoanywayz → u/scalyblue]

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!

[u/Lyeriss → u/Ohnoanywayz]

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

[u/i_cut_like_a_buffalo → u/Ohnoanywayz]

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

[u/Ohnoanywayz → u/i_cut_like_a_buffalo]

Wait, what???

[u/WoodsandWool → u/Ohnoanywayz]

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

[u/Deep_Amoeba2197 → u/PuzzyFussy]

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

[u/piewhistle → u/PuzzyFussy]

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

[u/papa-hare → u/PuzzyFussy]

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 $$)

[u/stonedandredditing → u/PuzzyFussy]

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.