Christmas Light Installation in Villa Rica, GA

Why Villa Rica houses are a different job

Villa Rica is the fastest-changing part of my service area. It straddles the Carroll and Douglas county line, sits right on I-20, and that has made it commuter territory for Atlanta. What came with the commuters is subdivisions, and what came with the subdivisions is a particular kind of house.

Builder homes out there are usually two storeys, with steep roof pitches and tall gable peaks over the front. That matters for lights in three separate ways, and they pull against each other.

The first is that it looks better. A peak is the highest thing on the house and a lit peak is the thing a neighbour sees from three doors down. Outline the eaves only and a tall house reads as half-finished — a bright line across the bottom with a dark triangle sitting above it.

The second is that it is harder to get to. A steep pitch is not something you walk. On the tall peaks the work happens off a ladder set on the ground, which means the ground has to be right — and a graded lot with fresh grass over clay, foundation shrubs planted tight against the wall, or a bed sloping away from the house all decide where a ladder can and cannot stand. I would rather set up three times than stretch off one bad footing.

The third is that height changes the wire. A longer vertical run means more weight hanging off the top clips and more of the strand exposed to wind, so the tension and the clip spacing at a peak are not the same as along a flat eave. That is the difference between a line that still looks straight in January and one that has bellied out by the second week.

The older side of town

Villa Rica is not only new construction. It is one of the oldest settlements in this part of the state, built on gold mining — the town still calls itself the City of Gold — and the streets in and around downtown have the housing stock to match.

Those are a different job again. Lower rooflines, more porch, more detail worth picking out by hand, and mature trees over the front yard. On a house like that the roofline is often the smaller part of the work and the columns, the porch rail and a wrapped trunk do more than another twenty feet of eave would.

Trees and shrubs, not just the roof

A lot of those subdivisions were cut into standing loblolly pine and the builders left as much of it as they could. Pine does not wrap well — the trunk goes up bare a long way and the limbs start above where a ladder wants to be. Hardwoods with low branching, and the smaller ornamental trees the builders planted out front, are the ones worth wrapping.

Foundation shrubs are the other easy win on a new-build lot. Builder landscaping is usually a row of small shrubs against the wall, and lighting them puts something bright at eye level under a roofline that is otherwise a long way up. You can see both approaches in the gallery.

Booking, and why it matters more out there

Villa Rica is a drive rather than a hop. I group houses on that side of the county into the same days, so the earlier you call, the easier it is to put you in one of them. Once those days are spoken for they are gone for the season — there is only one of me.

What is in the job is the same wherever you are: the strand cut to your roofline, clipped under the shingle rather than stapled into fascia, and taken back down when the season is over. That is set out in full on what you get.