HOA meeting follow-up: Victory is mine

On Thursday night's Daily Show, Bill Clinton said, "I got tired of going to meetings and having everybody say intelligent things and nothing ever happened." That mostly expresses my opinion regarding meetings in general and HOA meetings in particular.

Wednesday night Matt and I took an evening stroll to our community club house, where a record number of neighbors joined us for our annual meeting/complaint session. The board member running the meeting spent the first portion of the meeting attempting to postpone the inevitable, but the only reason anyone was there was to issue concerns regarding the latest round of HOA home inspections. Once we actually got down to business, it was reassuring to hear that virtually everyone was in the same boat with violations and had the same attitudes about moving forward. Namely: what's the deal with the gutter cleaning? Why were these inspections done in the late summer? Why are our repairs expected to be complete in a matter of weeks, right before winter sets in? How are we going to avoid this situation in the future?

On the matter of the gutters in particular, it turns out that our gutters cannot simply be power washed. Instead, they must be painted. As a group we talked about how, because nearly every one of the 274 homes in our community was cited for gutter cleaning, if it makes sense to collectively all chip in for one company to come out one week and do the work. Apparently, though, our HOA cannot endorse such a move, supposedly because it would make them liable for any damages that could possibly occur to our homes.

The meeting moved on, and it still was not clear what, if anything, we were going to do about the gutters. So, Matt stood up and said, "Maybe I'm missing something, but it's still not clear to me if we are going to find a company to do this work, or if we're going to petition to have this violation removed, or if we're going every man for himself." Others nodded in agreement, and finally the board member running the meeting said we should all hold off on the gutters for the next month until the HOA reaches some sort of decision with the inspections company.

Sounds like not a whole lot got done? Absolutely. See Clinton quote above.

So, Wednesday night post-meeting I did what I do best: I took matters into my own hands and wrote a strongly worded email.

Here's what I wrote:

Hello,

We are writing in regard to violations at our residence. We have taken care of the violations we received and understood. There are two violations, though, for which we would like greater clarification and detailed photos in reference to our specific property.

First of all, we were told to re-stain our deck. In late July 2009 we power washed and stained our deck a natural wood tone. We conducted this power washing and staining at that time because we were waiting for our HOA to settle the matter of acceptable deck stain colors after several residents raised concerns. We were sure to only use natural wood stain on our deck, as that was the resolution agreed upon by our HOA. We are concerned to see that we just received this violation to re-stain our deck (dated August 5 inspection, received in the mail on September 4). Please send us photos and greater explanation to outline exactly how our property is in violation, given the fact that we had performed this operation almost exactly one year ago. We would like to know how an inspection was performed on our deck, seeing as it is high off the ground, and anyone who actually stands on our deck can see that it is beautifully finished, with water beading on it when it rains. Because it does not appear that an inspector stood on our deck, were photographers stationed on ladders to document this violation?

Second of all, we received a violation to clean/wash our front gutter exterior. The houses in our neighborhood are exceptionally tall, so we are not clear as to exactly what this means. Could you please send us a photograph of our front gutter pointing out exactly what you noticed as our violation in this regard?

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. We look forward to hearing your immediate reply.

Thank you,
Matt and Stephanie
Home owners

Saturday morning I received this reply:

After reviewing your inspection photos we have waived the deck and the gutter cleaning violation.  Please disregard.  Sorry for the inconvenience. 

Customer Service

Booyah!

Important point: we never received photos from the inspection company. I would bet money on the fact that they do not have inspection photos, therefore they could not review them, and therefore they had no choice but to waive these supposed violations.

How did I know my plan would work? At the start of the complaints portion of the HOA meeting, a woman in our neighborhood raised her hand, admitted that she is a nerd (which I totally appreciated), and said she has surveillance videos recording the outside of her home 24/7. So, she caught our inspection company on tape, and she quickly discovered that the inspection people were outside her home and the homes nearby for all of two minutes collectively, during which time they were neither taking photos nor writing anything down. Seems suspicious, right? Even more suspicious is the fact that almost everyone received the exact same violations, coupled with the rumor that the inspections company was getting paid per violation they recorded. (Our HOA board would not explain exactly how they were paid.) Smells a little fishy. Either way, no gutter cleaning + no deck re-staining = giant win for Matt and Stephanie!

How to de-tarnish brass

This weekend, despite my general rage regarding some of the bogus violations we received from our latest HOA inspection, I decided to tackle what seemed like the smallest and most necessary project: de-tarnish our brass door hardware. Last weekend I successfully de-tarnished our brass outdoor light fixture (imagine it looking almost black, and me nursing it back to health).

For some reason, though, the door hardware tarnish is out of control.

Warning: don't be mistaken; this is not a "small" project. Many hours later, my labor is complete.

I've never de-tarnished brass before, so I looked up some helpful how-to's in Home Comforts, a book my buddy Sam thoughtfully sent me when I started this blog. This book is great, and it has helped me in several areas already, which I'll highlight in later posts.

Home Comforts told me to:

1) mix equal parts white flour and salt (I used table salt) with enough white vinegar to make a paste. (Oh, white vinegar, is there anything you can't do?)

2) Apply the paste to your brass surface and let it sit for an hour.

3) Remove the paste using a rag, and you should notice that the brownish tint has been replaced by a rose tint that can then be polished using standard metal polish.

There unfortunately does not appear to be a good non-chemical metal polish out there. If you know of a home remedy, I'd love to hear about it! So, I purchased 8 ounces of Brasso at Home Depot for $3.49.

Our outdoor light fixture only required one coating of the homemade paste before it was de-tarnished, but this door hardware was especially stubborn and required two applications.

Here's the hardware before

And a close-up for purposes of comparison

Here's how the hardware looks when covered in the paste

Here's the hardware after one application of the paste

And all clean, many, many hours of polishing later

The before-and-after close up

And here's the stupid thing I did: I failed to cover the lock when I was applying the paste the first time. So, the paste hardened inside the lock, and then we couldn't get our keys in the lock. Tired and running out of options and needing to lock our door and needing to get some items at Home Depot anyway, I asked a Home Depot employee what he thought I should do. Get a tiny file? Just buy a new lock? He said, to my surprise, take a hair pin and some WD-40, and that should do the trick. Genius! He was completely right, and I was fairly stupid.

Why didn't I just buy a new light fixture and new door hardware, or spray paint them black, and call it a day? Well, two reasons:

1) to be as green as possible, I generally try to operate under the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality, and in this case both items are fine and fully functioning

and

2) apparently the only acceptable finish for light fixtures and door hardware in our neighborhood is brass, so spray painting was out. Add that to the Draconian list.

The Brasso directions recommend polishing brass once every three months. So that I never have to spend a Sunday afternoon polishing brass again, I am going to get in the habit of maintaining these brass finishes once every three months on the same day I change our air filter.

HOA violations = bane of my existence

OK, this will be a venting post, but one that many of you homeowners with Home Owners Associations (HOA) can probably relate to. (Non-homeowners, take note, and try to avoid moving into a neighborhood with a crazy HOA if and when you do purchase a home!)

Quick back story...
The beautiful town homes in our neighborhood were built in 2002.

We moved into our beautiful town home in December 2006. When we moved in, our house was in tip-top condition. Since then, we have only made it more beautiful by landscaping the once-rather-bare front yard; adding a glass, modern storm door to the front door; replacing the chandelier visible in the front entryway; power washing and re-staining our deck; adding potted plants and flowers to our deck; growing grass and an herb garden in the backyard; installing a back splash in our kitchen; and painting most of the rooms in our house. Oh, and, we're exceptionally clean in both the inside and outside of our home. No clutter, nothing that should make anyone cringe.

We've lived here almost four years in marital bliss, getting to know our neighbors, picking up neighborhood trash we see on our multiple-times-a-day dogs walks...you know, trying to be good and whatnot.

Suburban bliss. It's all sunshine and rainbows, people.

Let's bring this up to the modern day...
Then last Saturday we received in the mail our list of seven (!) HOA violations. This year our HOA decided to contract out neighborhood maintenance inspection duties to an outside auditor. We've never received any violations, and this year we got seven exceptionally specific citations for things you would likely never notice driving through our neighborhood or visiting our house. I suppose the one point of solace is that everyone else in our neighborhood got at least the same "violations" we got, and in some cases they got something worse.

We were cited for:

• Front light fixture, tarnished (it's brass...already did this)
• Front door hardware, tarnished (also brass)
• Front columns, clean/wash (really? I mean, I already did this, but they were barely dirty....)
• Front vertical trim, paint (still need to figure out what this is talking about...)
• Front bay window panels, paint (I see two little specks that could be covered up)
• Front gutter, clean/wash (these are about 50 feet in the air, so if these need to be cleaned [and I don't even know how you could see that they need cleaning, and there are no trees up there] we will hire a professional with some other neighbors to get a group rate)
• Back deck, re-stain (we will NOT be doing this because we spent three days one year ago power washing and re-staining our deck using the requirements outlined by our HOA, and no one should be expected to do that every year)

Draconian HOA? You betcha!

So, I have crossed off two items so far this week, and I will not be doing one of them, so that leaves me with four to go, three that I'll do on my own and one that I'll hire someone for, if needed. These "violations" are supposed to be handled by October 16, at which point there will supposedly be another inspection and we'll supposedly be fined if we haven't complied. I say supposedly because:

1) So many people in our neighborhood, ourselves included, have never received violations.

2) Violations have never been enforced.

3) Our annual HOA meeting is next week. Matt and I have never attended, but I think we will, and a bunch of other neighbors will too. Perhaps we can reach some sort of compromise. I believe in democracy!

I will share with you all what I learn along the way as I figure out home maintenance. I've already figured out one thing about de-tarnishing brass, and that will be the subject of an immediate post.

In the meantime, have a happy, productive Saturday! For me, it's off to Home Depot.