Home I've owned for 15 years recently forced to join HOA, demands I make retroactive changes.

My wife and I purchased this home 15 years ago. Most of the homes in the neighborhood were built in the late 70s and earlier 80s there was never an HOA here. In late 2018 a petition to form and HOA began to be circulated. We flatly refused to sign and spoke with many of our neighbors encouraging the to oppose the formation of an HOA as well. Eventually however the vast majority of the area, roughly 150 homes, signed the petition, lawyers were consulted, official votes were held and a mandatory HOA was formed once covid restrictions were eased late in 2020. I've done my research and I know under Texas law I can be forced to join this HOA. However they are making retroactive rules that will be in some cases heartbreaking, and in some cases prohibitively expensive.

Rule #1 No large dogs. We've owned a black lab for 5 years, and a border colie for 3. Our daughters are extremely attached to them and it seems unreasonable the an HOA would be able to come in after the fact and demand we get rid of pets we had long before the HOA was formed.

#2 Houses cannot have pools. Not talking an above ground pool here, an inground pool that was already here when we bought the house. It was one of the reasons we bought the house and we keep it well maintained.

#3 The external aesthetics of our home. The roof which we replaced 3 years ago is the wrong color. Front doors must be wood, and in white, or a natural wood color. and must be a solid door with no window in it. We have a red fiberglass door with one of those half circle windows. The wood exterior trim is the wrong shade of white. We installed a new privacy fence around our backyard 2 years ago, red cedar, natural color, with a crisscrossed lattice pattern on top. Wrong color, wrong material, pickets the wrong width.

#4 We have the wrong type of grass. Our front and back lawns are St Augustine, the HOA regulations require Zoysia.

#5 HOA rule, cars cannot be parked in a driveway or in the street overnight. My wife and I each own a car, but the house has no garage. We have a carport, no carports allowed.

#6 Also our RV, and the carport structure it sits under has to go.

#7 We have the wrong kind of blinds, and the wrong color lightbulbs inside our home.(bad look for the neighborhood if the light shining out our windows at night isn't the same color in every home)

This is all insane, and I think I'm probably forgetting some things. People are starting to grumble about the $150 per month in dues our new board decided on. Maybe this will spark a revolt to get rid of the HOA. Until then I'm lost. I know I need a lawyer, but I'm in a small town. We don't have many lawyers here, and the ones I've been to aren't willing to go against the firm that helped set up the HOA. Are these kind of retroactive rules even enforceable? The cost to do all this isn't even realistically affordable right now, and they've said they're only giving homeowners a 3 month grace period to get everything done. The worst part is, the vast majority of homeowners are all in favor of all of this. They had homes that already conformed to the rules or required only minor changes to do so.

On a side note, I discovered theres a I guess parody? subreddit of this one for people who misspell advice. Trying to post there by mistake gave me a laugh I sorely needed.