I’m siding with the Roses
Please tell me that the article in this week’s Columbia Flyer about a local couple, living in Columbia for 30 years, is fighting to keep the vinyl siding they installed 16 years ago because someone just now decided to report the violation isn’t true.
Really?
Is this what our community has come to?
Isn’t there some kind of statute of limitations that could apply here? According to the article:
(Susan Rose)said she and her husband just wanted to install a higher-quality, lower-maintenance siding. They found the original vertical siding made of “pressed cardboard” to be problematic, because the vertical design, paired with the lack of an overhanging roof, meant that rain water would pool along the baseboard, rotting the siding and fostering the growth of unsightly green fungus.
Weary of the amount of time and money it took to clean the siding and have it repainted every few years, the Roses decided to switch to horizontal wood-textured vinyl siding.
Seems to me, the covenants need to be updated if they require residents to maintain a flawed design in the first place.
Form should follow function. Siding should protect our homes, not provide a breeding ground for mold, mildew, and rot.
It may be true that the Roses didn’t follow the procedure. But is a 16 year gap in the process worthy of all this energy? Are we really going to ask these people to spend $10K+ to fix a problem that shouldn’t even be a problem?
I hope not.
Our residents will be better served if the bad rules are changed.
Just my opinion.
pretty sure that OM updated their covenants a few years back to include vinyl siding. rules and regs need to be modified over time, because the world modifies over time.
One night a few years ago I stumbled upon an Arlington County Board Meeting on cable. I am still mystified by what I saw. A family was being runaround about putting a one-room addition on top of their garage by a vengeful neighbor. As their story was told it was clear that many months of delays had gone on while the neighbor’s concerns were aired. That family needed the addition because the mother had MS and could no longer use the stairs and the daughter had had a major nervous breakdown in college and was now living at home. I should point out that many times during the proceedings it was noted that this was not a matter of excessive house size or lot coverage. The neighbor was contesting on the basis that they had gotten a variance years before when they built the garage, providing AN EXTRA FOOT of space! So, I feel ya, I really, really feel ya.
MK – vinyl siding is not what is in question. It’s that rather than replace vertical siding with vertical siding, they replaced it with horizontal, due to potential damage and difficult upkeep issues.
EK – Didn’t those people have something better to do with their time?