Hanging lights on the house

[brandnio]

Hey, I'm going to be doing a display this year, but we just got our house painted. Do any of you have any suggestions on how to hang the lights on the house without chipping any paint? Or would I just be stuck doing some touching up when I take them down next year?

[Cray Augsburg]

It really all depends on where you want to hang the lights.

For the roofline, you can use what I call shingle clips. These plastic clips should be available in the Xmas sections of all the big box stores. They come in many different forms: some for clipping under shingles, some for clipping to gutters, some that will clip to either. They are also designed to hold a variety of different light styles (minis, C9s, etc.)

For windows, the best way I've found is to make a frame of 1x2 lumber and paint it to match the window trim. Then fasten lights to it in a semi-permanent way. Now find a way to fasten it around the window. Then you can easily remove/install it each year. Those with welding experience may use wire frames in a similar way.

And don't forget cable ties (zip ties). Avavilable in bulk, these are useful for attaching things to the house, as well as helping you keep your extension cords neat and tidy. For hanging lights on trees, I use cable ties to combine a string of green minis to a string of clear minis and a string of red minis. Then roll the combined strand into a ball to make it easier to hang on the tree. Then I run three channels to independently control the red clear or green lights.

Hope this gives you at least a couple of useful ideas.

Cray

[Wayne K]

I used 10 foot lengths of pvc and put brass hooks about every 2 foot or so in the peeks and then put small eye bolts into the pvc and then simply droped the pvc eyes over the hooks. On the rest that had gutters I used a bigger hook bolt and straightened them out a bit and then hooked them right on / over the gutter. But I was doing this with icicle lights that was about 10 foot long tie wraped to the pvc.

[George Simmons]

I use a staple gun on the trim - paint chips be damned! But, as a result, I spend time touching up trim in the spring. But for me that's easier than fiddling around when it comes to putting lights out in the cold and the staple gun gives me a nice neat straight line of lights. I'm not brave enough to put lights on the roof edge of the house so that's not an issue - even though I've still got thousands of roof clips from the last house I lived in.

[Cray Augsburg]

Yeah. From your avatar, it looks like it would quite a risk to put eave lights on your roof! That's why we have children.

Cray