Sticking it to The Man

Our current neighborhood is in the world's largest Homeowners Association. I've done extensive research on it. (not really). For the most part, they actually do the things that they're supposed to do. They take in a lot of money, and they tend to the common area landscaping. There's a lot of money in this master planned community, and there's a lot of landscaping. In fact, our HOA also maintains 3 pools, 2 soccer practice field areas, a whole hike and bike trail system, and a whole bunch of other things that I probably haven't thought about.  In fact, I'm pretty sure that there are 2 or 3 HOAs under the big umbrella that makes up our master planned community. It's a complicated order.

They have good people running the thing, they run it well, and they are easily accessible and helpful. But that doesn't keep it from being a PITA when you finish watching HGTV and want to take on a DIY project at your own home. You have now placed yourself at the mercy of the Architectural Review Committee. You have to log onto your rarely-used HOA website account and dig through the documents to see if you have to put together a proposal for them to review. If you are required to do so, you usually have to submit The Form and The Check, which will be held and returned when they inspect and approve the final product.

We've been here half a dozen years now, and we've been in contact with the ARC people 3 times that I can remember. We had to get approval to put up a satellite dish right after we moved here. That was a good warm up game for having to deal with the ARC. Technically, by federal law you can't be prohibited from putting up as many satellite dishes as you like, wherever you like on your roof. But we still had to go through an email process with the ARC. We didn't have to formalize it and submit The Form and The Check, but we did email back and forth. Then came the solar panels. That required The Form, The Check, and The Permit (which is actually just a sheet of green paper that you put in your front window). Again, federal law is on your side here, but the HOA would really, really like it if your solar panels can't be seen from the street. For some reason, our solar panels were a complicated order and took 6 months to get them up and functioning. That was fun. We had some informal emails with the ARC to stay on their good side. But they signed off on us at the end and got The Check back. Success! The most recent ARC encounter was a few weeks ago when we got our roof replaced (after the Great Hailstorm of April 18, 2015). Luckily, we didn't have to formalize it - but we got approval to replace our roof with the same color shingles. Thanks so much. BTW, removing the solar panels for the roof replacement and getting them back on the roof has proved to be a complicated order too. Why us?

I'm sure you guessed it already - that the Urban Farmhouse IS NOT in a Homeowners Association! As agreeable as the ARC seems to be in our current neighborhood, it's quite freeing to think about the fact that we don't have to get approval from anyone to do something crazy like paint the exterior of our new house. I guess it's kind of easy to understand the lack of required approval when you see the current mint green color that it is painted. It was recently done we think, which is nice, but I am definitely not a fan of mint green. 

I've spent a lot of time playing around with apps that let you change the exterior color on an image. They're not especially great at it (or maybe it's just me), but you can get a basic idea. If I'm keeping it real (KIR), I played around with these apps before we even had the Urban Farmhouse under contract. I was a little obsessed. It was fate for us to come together. This is just an example - I've totally changed my mind about what we will do with the exterior.

It's been a lot of fun for me to think about all the things we can do at the Urban Farmhouse that we've never been able to do. One project that I thought would be cool was to build a bunk house in the backyard.  Our oldest is worried about where she will sleep, so I figure a bunk house is a step up from a hammock. However, I've since learned that the perfect location I scouted for it is directly over the drain field for the septic system - which it's a huge no no to put anything on top of the tanks or the drain field. 

By the way, will we ever get that drain field test done and move forward out of the option period? I'm beginning to wonder.