The folks who are in charge of historic districts sure can be sticklers for the rules…

BUT they should probably know all the rules themselves before they go spouting off to folks about what they should or shouldn’t be doing with their houses.

Take a look at this story from Reddit and see how this person showed some of these people what was really going on.

Won’t let me do renovations to the outside of my buildings because they’re in a “historic district”, let’s see how you like them now.

“This isn’t me but a brilliant move of pettiness in my town.

I live in a University town and a few years back, a guy who owned three side by side colonial era houses and rented them out to students wanted to renovate the outside.

Not so fast!

Things like put in double paned-windows, and new coat of paint, take down porches that were falling apart and other minor issues.

Our town put a stop work order on him and took him to court because the houses were “historic”.

All he was allowed to do was do minor safety repairs on the porches and paint the houses in a manner appropriate to their era.

Here we go!

Well he did some research and found that colonial houses could be all sorts of colors so he painted (what used to be tasteful white homes) them orange, lime green and puke yellow.

The town took him to court again but he was able to show proof that that wasn’t unusual for colonial era home in our area, so it was thrown out of court and the town lived with garish colors on Main Street until the town gave him permission to do the upgrades he requested.”

Check out what folks had to say on Reddit.

One individual shared a story.

Another person spoke up.

This reader chimed in.

Another Reddit user shared their thoughts.

This person had a funny story to tell.

That backfired in spectacular fashion!

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.