Hell and the Home Owners Association

I had a vision of hell yesterday.

The crazy man who agreed to marry me is from Chicago. His background is politics and he worked for the ILL state legislature before moving out to California. I point this out because while he's experienced "the Machine" in action, he wasn't prepared our trip Saturday.

My DH wanted to stop at Heritage, one of the developments for custom built homes in Woodland. He's thinking about buying a lot, sitting on it and building later. We're both simple people who like building things, anything and everything. We have this vision of lots of sweat equity no matter what we decide to buy.

However this is California, right outside of Davis. I have some idea of what it would entail but, bless his unusually optimistic soul, he wants take the idea out for a spin.

Apparently in this community the lots start at the price of a medium condo. The restrictions are so numerous that you all still end up essentially living in the same style and floorplan, which can't be under 3000 sqft. I asked the salesperson
why you would build here instead of Davis since the prices and restrictions were about the same. She didn't answer but she did say that buying here gave you the
possiblity of sending your kids to either Davis or Woodland schools.

This isn't an option in the other developments right down and across the street
but then those homes aren't sporting $800,000 price tags. That is so Davis- if you throw money at them, you can get into their school district.

So we go and tour a spec home in the development. We came away completely unimpressed. The lot wasn't any bigger then the Centex offerings down the street at $620k. The flyer raved about barrel and vaulted ceilings. It had one small barrel in the family room and a small vaulted in a bedroom. The master was small and the floorplan made it feel like 2600 sqft.

A trip to Califoria Closets, a lot of molding, and some really unfortunate marble tile choices made this place custom. I named it "the over-priced house of brown". Never thought I'd ever say it but Centex had these yahoos beat hands down on price and quality. I think I have to go wash my hands now >; )