Up on the Housetop - Christmas Light Installation

Having shared our Christmas decor for our great room, playroom, and Clara’s room, let’s take our holiday home tour outside!

This year we pulled the trigger on something I’ve been interested in for a long time, professional Christmas light installation!

I love a house all aglow in holiday lights, but felt quite uneasy about Aaron or I up on ladder to light our two-story house. We don’t have the right equipment or experience for me to feel super safe about it and frankly my strong-preference for VERY straight light installation was a bit of a barrier for someone in our household taking on the task. And our reality as a two-career family is that sometimes the best value for us to pay out of pocket and free up some family time. With that I set out to get recommendations on professional installation from our neighborhood’s Facebook group so we could get a pro with has the experience and equipment to do the job safely and expertly and we could help throw a little business to a small business in a difficult year.

Many of our neighbors recommended the same full-service business for light installation so they were my first contact. They generously came out and provided a thorough quote. While what they proposed sounded great, fully custom installation to the roof-line of the house, service and support while the lights are up and full removal and storage, the first year investment was several hundred dollars (over $800) and out of our budget. If this were a long-term home for us, we might have gone with the high up-front costs and enjoyed the fully-custom installation for years to come as in their model you own the custom lights, but we are only set to be here for two years, so we couldn’t justify it. We tried another company whose model is to rent you the lights, and while it was lower in year one costs (~$550), it was still too high for our budget.

Based on the two quotes we received I feared pro-installation might be out of reach for us this year, but in a last-ditch effort to make it work I went back to my original post and found a couple of recommendation for a small, local business who installs your own lights at very reasonable rates, so I reached out and was delighted to learn that we could support a local business and have our house lit, even with buying lights, extension cords, and clips and tipping generously, we saved more than half the cost of the full-service company (we spent about $300 between lights and labor) and got a beautifully lit home for the holidays! The who gentleman installed gave great customer service and we will enthusiastically hire him back next year where we hope to add more in terms of porch decor and maybe some inflatables! For this year we are thrilled to be LIT!

But for this year, she’s a beaut!