I received 2 nastygrams today from my lovely HOA. The first was because of a small dent in the garage door I assume from someone accidentally hitting it. I say I assume because I bought the house in 2018 and it was there when I purchased it. So, it happened sometime before that. For grins, I checked google maps and there was a huge lapse in times for pictures. It was not there in 2011 and it was in 2022. Had to zoom in to actually see it. It's not a big enough dent for me to even care about. Anyway, I'm hoping I can just take a hammer to it and make them happy instead of replacing the whole panel on the door. I'm not holding out a ton of hope however.

The second letter is what is irritating. It said to paint my siding. The picture they included is black and white, so not much can be seen. It does look like one piece of siding does need painted however. I walked outside to see what my house looks like and didn't see any issues at all. I shouldn't have seeing as how I just painted the house last year. I looked at the picture again and IT'S NOT EVEN MY HOUSE! They zoomed in to the piece that's needing painted, so there's really no distinguishing features to compare my house to this picture. I then noticed the wire coming through the wall that controls the sprinkler system. The picture had this right next to a downspout. Mine is several feet back from the downspout (like 6' or so). This is about the only thing there to prove it's not mine. Otherwise, it could be almost any house in the neighborhood.

So irritating. I know some will respond and say how they could never live in an HOA. I don't disagree. The next house I purchase will definitely not be in an HOA community. I do think if you let something slide for more than 7 years now, you shouldn't be able to enforce it at this point. I'll fix it and play nice, but seems ridiculous.

Anyway, have a good rest of your weekend! Go Chiefs!

I only owned a few Condo's and Town Homes with an HOA. In one case, I purchased a Town Home with a medium read fenced in Private Yard that the prior owners had installed various improvements without a permit.

I documented everything with my purchase inspection and a detailed disclosure from the sellers and their agent.

I talked with the President of the HOA. When he learned I was a licensed contractor with lots of discontinued parts, he stuck a deal. If I pulled permits and got things passed in my read fenced in yard, and fixed his broken sliding pocket doors, he would give me written permission.

Go search Amazon for "bandaid for car dent" and you can cover that dent for $6. Take a picture and send it in, I'm sure that will be acceptable to the HOA. If nothing else I would do it just to get the rise out of them.

I had a single panel on a Wayne Dalton door with a dent in it and my regular door company replaced just the single panel. The single panel was about 1/3 of the entire door but the tenant was happy that they were not getting beat up as much as door did.

My wunderkind handyman was able to straighten out two pretty badly bent garage doors by taking them off and using a 2x4 and clamps.