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In reply to the discussion: Texas couple paint their house bright shade of teal only to receive DEATH THREATS from neighbors who [View all]Manifestor_of_Light
(21,046 posts)32. A lesser version of that happened to me.
A few years ago, I painted the house siding (Compressed asbestos) a sky blue and the brick wainscoting a much darker blue. Mine was more of a pure blue than this house. Mine's a much smaller house than that. Mine is a Gothic bungalow. We took down ugly aluminum awnings my grandparents had put up (good for slicing the top of your head if you weren't careful) and we put up egg and dart painted crown moldings over the windows. We tried to change it from "1970s era nursing home" to "1880s Gothic bungalow" character.
The gossip down at the hardware store was "Buncha Messcans musta moved in thar" because we all know that boring white people would never dare paint their house a non-neutral color and have the neighbors disapprove of them for being different. Being different is bad around here.
I've heard of people in rich neighborhoods freaking out over weird colors in neighborhoods without a HOA. In Houston I had a next door neighbor constantly calling the City of Houston to come out and hassle me. We didn't have an HOA but she wished we did. I guess we weren't respectable enough. We didn't have shiny new SUVs to drive. We had old cars.
The complaints the city employee told me about? "You have sticks in your yard." "You have poison ivy on your back fence." First of all I had huge oak trees which would be a good reason to have sticks in my yard. Secondly, why is snoopy neighbor worried about my back fence when she lives on a lot on the SIDE of my lot? How would she know about what's on my back fence? I asked the city employee if he knew what poison ivy looked like. He said no. I said I didn't either. Strangely enough, that alleged poison ivy sprouted honeysuckle blossoms in the summertime.
The people in the article live in far North suburbia of Houston which is quite conservative. I live in a little town in TX that doesn't have to worry about a HOA telling me what color to paint my house. I have the only non-neutral color painted house in town. However, the locals tend to strew a lot of trash on my right of way, which is not my responsibility to maintain. The Texas Highway Department is supposed to maintain it and they never mow it or do anything to it, and it's hilly and quite difficult to mow in places. Plastic shopping bags, glass beer bottles, beer cans, chip bags. The latest thing hubby found right by the driveway was a used plastic douche bottle crumpled up with nozzle still attached.
Once my husband was standing out in the driveway and somebody pulled up right in front of him in a pickup and poured a coke out of a cup on the ground. We even get trash imported from the nearest McDonald's. That's twenty miles away in the next county. They buy it in the next county, eat it, and then toss the bag out twenty miles later on my right of way. They can't find a trash can at a gas station and use it.
That tells me that the rest of the town probably hates us for fixing up our house to look nice, do some landscaping and mowing to make it look like the plants are somewhat intentional. We are not anywhere near the "this looks like a golf course" stage.
As my dad said when some guy down the street put in an in-ground swimming pool in our crummy post-war suburbia subdivision, "There goes the neighborhood."
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Texas couple paint their house bright shade of teal only to receive DEATH THREATS from neighbors who [View all]
Judi Lynn
Oct 2015
OP
Not my favorite color by a long shot but if they had permission then whatever *shrug*
cstanleytech
Oct 2015
#1
When we repainted ours a decade or so back to a nice purple-blue shade
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
Oct 2015
#41
Yes, a nice Lime Jello Green with Hunter's Orange trim would have looked better, but still nice!
FrodosPet
Oct 2015
#108
Teal is a color, a pretty one, but the pic of that house is turquoise on my monitor.
dixiegrrrrl
Oct 2015
#39
I have a vivid violet house down the block and I have seen totally black houses
roguevalley
Oct 2015
#3
Fortunately, ours does a good job. Never a complaint. They focus on keeping the common
RKP5637
Oct 2015
#67
Multi-unit properties come with such rules by default because the exterior is collectively owned.
NutmegYankee
Oct 2015
#105
I love my HOA. $30 a year, they take care of the entrances, decorate for holidays,
djean111
Oct 2015
#50
Oh, dear... hope those poor special snowflake neighbors never visit San Francisco...
TygrBright
Oct 2015
#5
Exactly, the Victorians in SFO are beautiful. Imagine if they had used purple, orange, brown
RKP5637
Oct 2015
#68
Yep! Exactly!!! Hmmmm, what do they want them to paint it ... plain generic beige. n/t
RKP5637
Oct 2015
#69
Isn't it nice that people who do not pay the bills in the house have the right to tell you
Feeling the Bern
Oct 2015
#9
It's not that I don't like the color, I just think it doesn't go well with the color of the brick.
YOHABLO
Oct 2015
#18
Ya I think its the brick thats throwing me off as well now that I look at it.
cstanleytech
Oct 2015
#23
In the first pic, he is shown as a patient puppy while I fill his water pool.
dixiegrrrrl
Oct 2015
#46
"'Everything from white trash Californians, "what are they doing here" to "we want to hang them"
cui bono
Oct 2015
#31
There used to be a barn near where I live that was painted lavender.
Fortinbras Armstrong
Oct 2015
#44
when first home shopping in Texas many of the old neighborhood ass. rules still had
Sunlei
Oct 2015
#53
this is why i hate homeowner associations ,just another layer of bearucratic nonsense
allan01
Oct 2015
#57
I think it's beautiful. Victorian houses are typically painted like this. What a bunch of
RKP5637
Oct 2015
#65
There's about 3 that color in our National Registry historical district. Too bad some can't
sinkingfeeling
Oct 2015
#70
That is very California. There are many cities in CA with neighborhoods of Victorian style houses
Cleita
Oct 2015
#78
There are many cultures in which brightly colored houses are the norm ...
eppur_se_muova
Oct 2015
#81