Restoring a Royal Oak bungalow- a criminal offense

If you have driven down Lincoln, you might have noticed our house.  You might have said to yourself, "what are those people doing?!" Or, "this is taking forever!".  My husband and I bought a 1923 bungalow here in Royal Oak back in 2010.The house had set empty for several years after the elderly previous owner passed away.  It had not been well maintained, inside or out.  We joked that the large backyard resembled a tropical rain forest.  The interior was dirty and shabby; the decor reminiscent of 1974.  However...there was a real charm to place.  The minute we saw it, we knew this house was the one.  The day we closed on it, we began working.  We pulled up carpeting, scraped wallpaper, removed drop ceilings. We refinished the floors, installed a new furnace, upgraded the electrical.  We spent a small fortune clearing out the overgrowth in the backyard.  Neighbors were cheering.  The city was not.  We received one code enforcement violation notice after another.  We began clearing out the basement, and stacked the wood behind the house before loading it up and taking it to the dump- violation notice.  Our neighbor set a tire out for trash pick up, in front of his house- *we* received a violation notice for it.  Clearing the overgrowth around the garage revealed peeling paint- we received a violation notice, and were given one month to rectify the situation- in February!  In late spring of 2011, we began removing the aluminum siding on the house, with the intention of completely restoring the original cedar clapboards underneath.  No sooner did we set to work, then we received more violation notices- peeling paint again.  My husband finally called and spoke with the code enforcement officer, and explained what we were doing, and ventured a guess of when the work would be complete.  I concede that we were overly optimistic.  It took months to just remove the siding.  We had to bring in scaffolding, the whole nine yards.  Completely removing the paint on the entire house and garage, following lead safe procedures, is very time consuming and labor intensive.  Working in the evenings and on weekends,  working around Michigan weather, we had most of the paint off by the following year.  We had carpenters out to rebuild the trim work that was damaged during the siding installation, and replace any cedar clapboards that were in bad shape.  The drip edges had all been hacked off, every window sill cut to fit the aluminum frame.  Then, in September 2012, we received another violation notice, from another code enforcement officer.  My husband called again.  This officer wasn't interested in hearing about what we were doing.  He said we had a month to complete the job, at which point he would issue a ticket.  We couldn't paint at that point even if we were through with our prep- the weather had already turned too cold and wet, and we had our wedding in New Orleans scheduled for the end of the month.  We decided we had no choice but to fight the ticket.  In December of 2012, we appeared before the magistrate.  We took pictures of our house, detailed explanations of the work we are doing and the methods we are using, letters of support from several of our neighbors, and examples of similar old house restoration projects in other communities that had also run afoul of local building departments.  The magistrate was quite sympathetic to what we were doing, sharing with us his background as owner of the second oldest home in Royal Oak, and involvement with the Historic Commission.  He dismissed the fine, and to mollify the city, gave us a July 4 deadline to have the house primed.  We worried and strategized all winter.  We had quite a bit of prep to do before we could paint- there was still paint to be removed, followed by patching, sanding, and washing.  I was pregnant- and due July 10.  That meant my husband would need to handle all the lead paint removal on his own.  I could paint, wearing a special respirator, but I would not be climbing ladders or scaffolding.  We prayed for spring weather like we had in 2012.  Unfortunately, that didn't happen.  I actually charted the temperature and the rain.  We resigned ourselves to getting done what we could, and resolved to continue to do it the right way.  By July 4, we had two sides painted.  Our son was born, and within days my husband was back outside working on the house.  In September, we received a ticket from the city.  We requested an informal hearing once again.  My husband continued working on the house, almost entirely on his own, in addition to working full time, and helping me around the house as I recovered from a caesarean section.  By the time we appeared before the magistrate on October 15, we had a third side painted.  Again, the magistrate was sympathetic.  "Your house could be on HGTV", he repeatedly said.  However, he told us, the city does not care about what you are doing- they are simply going by the ordinance that says that the structure must be painted.  The magistrate mentioned that he had gotten considerable grief from the city after giving us an extended deadline the previous year.  I got an admission from the code enforcement officer that there is, in fact, no time limit specified in the city's ordinance.  It is at the discretion of the code enforcement officer, and this particular officer told us that he believes a project such as ours should take no longer than a month, start to finish.  Well.  We found out that he had issued us a third ticket before we even appeared in court to have our hearing for the second.  He announced his intention to issue us a fourth ticket.  The magistrate advised us that the fourth ticket is a misdemeanor, a criminal offense, and cautioned us that in a neighboring community a woman had a warrant issued for her arrest after being cited for not mowing her lawn.  He suggested we retain counsel.  We were incredulous.  Criminal charges for restoring our historic house?  My husband is on a probationary green card- he is French- and this might have repercussions on his immigration status.  We are not neglectful homeowners- we have never stopped working on our house.  We have used methods that have been slow and tedious, but have kept lead paint dust from blanketing our neighborhood.  We have people stop almost on a daily basis to congratulate us on what we are doing.  After what we have gone through, and in light of what we have ahead of us, I now say, "don't attempt this in Royal Oak.  If you are a developer, and you want to buy a bungalow, bulldoze it, and build a castle, or if you want to buy an old house, gut it, add an addition and cover the whole thing with vinyl, then yes, this is the city for you.  If you are just a regular person trying to do a historic preservation...I wouldn't advise it."  We are working very hard to do a difficult job the right way.  The results are better than I imagined in my wildest dreams.  And to the city, it absolutely does not matter.  We are really sad that there is no recognition of the value of what we are doing.  Why would anyone else want to buy an old house to restore it?  Unless you have a boatload of money to hire contractors to do the work quickly for you, you will invariably run into trouble given the time these projects take.  We hope that sharing our story will make the city reconsider how it deals with homeowners like us.  We have created a Facebook page for our house, Restoration Royal Oak (www.facebook.com/restorationroyaloak) to highlight the work that we are doing.  We are very actively caring for our house- we are a credit to this community.  We should not be threatened with arrest and fines.