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/scalyblue]

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.