Many homeowners understand the struggle of living under the watchful eye of an overly controlling HOA.

When one HOA president made one couple’s life a nightmare over the “wrong shade of brown” for their house, they decided to exploit an oversight in the handbook and paint their house the most audacious shade of orange — just to make the president see red.

You’ll want to read on for this one!

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Vindictive HOA President

We’ll call my neighbors Liz and Dave.

They were nice folks who ran afoul of the homeowner’s association (HOA) when the busybody president, who lived next door to them (we’ll call her Joan), got it in her rotted turnip for a brain that Liz and Dave had taken in an illegal renter.

Renting out rooms was strictly against HOA policy.

But this wasn’t what was going on at all.

They had not rented out a room.

Liz’s elderly mother had moved in with them after breaking her hip and being unable to live alone anymore.

Joan sent them a very threatening letter about their “unlawful renter” and how fines would accrue if the “unlawful renter” didn’t vacate immediately.

Joan was determined to play dirty, and refused to hear Liz and Dave out on any of their reasoning.

It was accompanied with a copy of that part of the bylaws and pictures of Liz’s elderly mother taken through windows of their house.

Creep alert!

They wrote back that there was no renter and explained the situation.

Joan did not believe that “story” and had the HOA lawyer start sending them certified letters about their continued violations with ever-increasing insane fines.

This went over poorly.

The issue escalated.

Liz and Dave got their own lawyer to fire back a cease and desist letter.

After many increasingly aggressive back and forths, it all culminated in an association meeting where Liz, Dave, and Liz’s mother came in with ID and birth certificates, and basically made Joan look like the pimple on the backside of humanity she was.

But Joan wasn’t done yet.

They won, but Joan was furious, and swore she’d get them for something.

Joan maintained until the day I left for college (last I knew of her) that Liz and Dave had forged those driver’s licenses and birth certificates to keep their unlawful renter.

Cut to the following fall. Liz and Dave needed to repaint the house after making some siding repairs post-hurricane.

They carefully checked the bylaws for approved paint colors and picked out a fairly bland shade of something between brown and tan.

They gave the painters the color info listed in the bylaws, and painting happened.

But Joan was determined to make them pay.

Less than a week after their house was painted, they got another certified letter from the HOA lawyer stating their house was the wrong color.

They fired back evidence they ordered exactly what was in the bylaws.

They provided some asinine reasoning as to why the color as wrong.

Well, after many back and forths, it turned out the approved color and the swatches on file with the board no longer matched because the manufacturer had changed the colors in their line slightly due to some kind of formula change.

Their house was a few shades darker than it should have been.

See, the bylaws listed the manufacturer color info “for convenience,” but the shades actually had to match the official swatches you could have theoretically borrowed from the board and gotten color matched.

It was clear this was all just a petty ploy by Joan to make them miserable.

Nobody ever did that, but Joan was out for blood after the “unlawful renter” and forced them to have to repaint.

Liz and Dave were taking no chances on the second try.

They ended up finding a loophole that just might get back at Joan.

They got the swatch set from the HOA.

For some reason, it made no distinction between approved accent colors (most houses in the neighborhood had brightly colored doors) or house colors.

They decided that if they had to paint their house a second time, Joan, the dog that caught the car, could live next to the most garish option they had.

It was pumpkin orange.

The painters asked multiple times if they were sure.

They were very sure.

You couldn’t see the orange from inside, but you sure could from next door!

Once they showed her the rules, her hands were tied!

Joan made many attempts to object to this, but it was within the letter of the HOA rules, and the house stayed orange until long after I moved away.

Joan was playing checkers, Liz and Dave were playing chess!

What did Reddit have to say?

HOA leadership always seems to attract the worst kinds of people.

Sometimes people just need time to come around to an idea.

This user has some thoughts on the whole paint color debacle.

This person joined an HOA just to try and clamp down some of the craziness!

The homeowners’ final act was a colorful reminder that a little rebellion can really brighten your life.

Forget seeing red — this no-good HOA president was seeing orange!

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.