mjah
November-13th-2009, 08:56 AM
Yeah, they're Christmas lights. We don't do "holiday displays" in this house. And they're going up on the house soon.
So the previous owner of this house thought it would be a good idea to smear perhaps 1,500 sq. ft. of the house's front facade with stucco. Truth be told, it looks great and isn't a total maintenance nightmare (after some significant remediation efforts and special elastomeric paint).
But.
Hanging Christmas lights is a total PitA. Driving nails, screws, or any other kind of intrusive fastener into the stucco is an incredibly stupid idea. No type of temporary (totally removable!!!) adhesive that I know of sticks to stucco, which up close is best described as "wavy specialty cement" because that's exactly what it is. If Christmas light bulbs hit the stucco with even moderate force, they tend to shatter. And there's really no avoiding the bulb/stucco proximity without making the house look incomplete.
Now, I can stick lights to the gutters in about a dozen different ways. That's easy. But to outline the house in any attractive scheme, I have to span 25-foot vertical runs of nothing but stucco.
Last year I tried clipping one end of a light string to a gutter, letting it run free all the way down to the ground, and then securing the string at the ground level too. I put some pretty good tension in the line to hold it straight. That was okay, but my initial fears about it were fully realized when the damned thing swung around in the winter wind, smashed into the stucco, and broke about 7 little bulbs. And there's no way to get enough tension in the light string to get the sway out. The string can't handle it.
So I'm looking for recommendations on stabilizing these long open-space light runs. I've thought about clamping a cable in significant tension across the 25' height, and then wrapping the lights around the cable. That might be workable, as long as the cable tension doesn't start creating gutter sag (where else would I attach it up top?). I also thought about really long stretches of 1/2" doweling, with one end of the doweling standing on the ground and the other end clamped up top to hold it vertical. This eliminates any real downforce on the gutter. But where do they sell such long lengths of tiny-diameter material and how would you keep it from sagging with time and weather? I don't really want to stand a much larger diameter pipe in about 8 corners on the front of my house.
Ideas welcome!
So the previous owner of this house thought it would be a good idea to smear perhaps 1,500 sq. ft. of the house's front facade with stucco. Truth be told, it looks great and isn't a total maintenance nightmare (after some significant remediation efforts and special elastomeric paint).
But.
Hanging Christmas lights is a total PitA. Driving nails, screws, or any other kind of intrusive fastener into the stucco is an incredibly stupid idea. No type of temporary (totally removable!!!) adhesive that I know of sticks to stucco, which up close is best described as "wavy specialty cement" because that's exactly what it is. If Christmas light bulbs hit the stucco with even moderate force, they tend to shatter. And there's really no avoiding the bulb/stucco proximity without making the house look incomplete.
Now, I can stick lights to the gutters in about a dozen different ways. That's easy. But to outline the house in any attractive scheme, I have to span 25-foot vertical runs of nothing but stucco.
Last year I tried clipping one end of a light string to a gutter, letting it run free all the way down to the ground, and then securing the string at the ground level too. I put some pretty good tension in the line to hold it straight. That was okay, but my initial fears about it were fully realized when the damned thing swung around in the winter wind, smashed into the stucco, and broke about 7 little bulbs. And there's no way to get enough tension in the light string to get the sway out. The string can't handle it.
So I'm looking for recommendations on stabilizing these long open-space light runs. I've thought about clamping a cable in significant tension across the 25' height, and then wrapping the lights around the cable. That might be workable, as long as the cable tension doesn't start creating gutter sag (where else would I attach it up top?). I also thought about really long stretches of 1/2" doweling, with one end of the doweling standing on the ground and the other end clamped up top to hold it vertical. This eliminates any real downforce on the gutter. But where do they sell such long lengths of tiny-diameter material and how would you keep it from sagging with time and weather? I don't really want to stand a much larger diameter pipe in about 8 corners on the front of my house.
Ideas welcome!