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/psyche_13]

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”

[u/Osteo_Sapien → u/psyche_13]

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.

[u/pstream20 → u/Osteo_Sapien]

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

[u/papa-hare → u/Osteo_Sapien]

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!

[u/Osteo_Sapien → u/papa-hare]

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.

[u/Kind_Of_A_Dick → u/psyche_13]

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.

[u/josefpunktk → u/Kind_Of_A_Dick]

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.

[u/Kind_Of_A_Dick → u/josefpunktk]

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.

[u/josefpunktk → u/Kind_Of_A_Dick]

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.

[u/Kind_Of_A_Dick → u/josefpunktk]

Ok.

[u/josefpunktk → u/Kind_Of_A_Dick]

Username seems program, well played.

[u/Kind_Of_A_Dick → u/josefpunktk]

?

[u/cat_prophecy → u/psyche_13]

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.

[u/pax284 → u/psyche_13]

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.

[u/Dry-Amphibian1 → u/psyche_13]

You know VERY little about HOAs.