DECORATING WITH LIGHTS FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Hang Outdoor Christmas Lights
You’ll find a variety of bright and merry holiday lights for outdoor decoration at your Longenecker’s Hardware store. There are string icicle lights for roof edges, net lights for bushes, colored floodlights, and rope lights for railings, porches, trees, and around doors and windows.
Here are the basics on how to decorate your house with Christmas lights.
Step 1: Plan Your Lighting
Make a dimensioned sketch of the area of the house you’ll be lighting. With the house sketch and list of available supplies at hand, devise a plan for lights and write up a shopping list.
Step 2: Provide Safe Power
Power your lights safely and responsibly. Buy a 16-gauge extension cord with an in-line circuit breaker and multi-outlet plug, if you’re stringing many lights. You may need additional standard 16-gauge cords. “Landscape” cords are colored green to make them less visible in the grass and shrubs. Wrap all connections with electrical tape and/or cover them with a plastic bag taped to the cords to seal the ends.
If you have an outdoor outlet that has covers that snap over the unused receptacles, replace the cover with a larger “in-use” type, which will protect the receptacle from the weather when it is in use. Also, make sure that the receptacle is a GFCI (ground-fault circuit interrupter) type.
Step 3: String Lights on Your House
Use string lights, regular or icicle-style, to outline the architectural lines of your house. Slip universal-style clips under the sidewall siding or the shingles at gable roof edges and snap the wires or lamps into the clips. Use gutter clips or S-hooks to hang strings of lights to the front edge of gutters.
Step 4: Place Lights on Trees and Shrubs
Cover your trees and shrubs with holiday lights. Rather than trying to twist and wrap wires around the branches, use reusable clips and/or various sizes of plastic cable ties.
Light mats, which are web-like arrangements of evenly spaced lights, work well over manicured shrubs such as yews. Center the mat at the top front edge so any open or overlapped areas will be in the back of the shrub.
Hang Indoor Christmas Lights
Add lights to your Christmas tree by working from the inside (close to the tree trunk) out towards the tips of the branches. When you reach the tip of a branch, wrap your way back toward the trunk.
Mini lights and C7 Christmas lights are typically used to decorate indoor trees. Ask your local experts at True Value for assistance in choosing the right bulbs for your tree.
Use Christmas lights throughout your home (such as rope lights and mini-lights) along doorways, windows, stair railings and mantels to add a festive look to your rooms.
Longenecker’s Hardware has many types of timers for your indoor and outdoor lights and many on sale now. Timers save energy and your time so when the sun goes down, your lighting automatically comes on!
