To keep from damaging the eaves or siding on your home when mounting holiday lights or other decorations, attach self-adhesive, plastic mounting bases to your house, then use removable plastic cable ties to attach the decorations to the slots in the bases. Leave the brackets in place when the decorations are removed so they can be used again next year.
Self-adhesive, plastic mounting bases and plastic cable ties are available in the electrical department of home centers such as The Home Depot, and are also available online from The Home Depot.
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We all spent a lot of time taking care of the outside of our house so the last thing you want to do is damage it when you start to hang how are they lighted or decorations of any kind. You start driving screws and pounding nails outside of your house, they’ll eventually rust and stain the siding or they can leave holes if you allow water to penetrate.
So here, I’m hanging some holiday lights and I came up with a really clever idea I think that eliminates any kind of metal fastener. These are plastic mounting squares that have peel and stick backing. You just peel off the paper backing, clean the surface well and just press it in place.
Here you see, I’ve got a couple in place already right between the two windows. And then if you look closely you see, it has four slots on this mounting base so you can insert a cable tie. Now it also has a hole in the middle where you can put in a screw but we’re just going to use cable ties and just put the lights in their, snag this up and you’ll here it zip, there you go and now if you want, you can come back with a pair of pliers and snip off this little tail.
The nice thing is, this will hold the lights or the decorations really secure in place and at the end of the season, you just snip off the cable tie, pull it out, leave the mounting base in place and you’re going to reuse it next year.
December 6th, 2011 at 1:49 pm
Joe, thanks for the plastic mounting base idea for mounting lights. I am tired of climbing on the roof. I will probably try to mount the bases while it is warm outside.
Joe T. Says:December 6th, 2011 at 2:12 pm
Hi James, Glad you liked the mounting-base idea. It really is a very slick trick. But I’ve got to give credit to our producer, Scott Gardner, for bringing it to my attention. Good luck getting the lights up before winter blows in. And stay off the roof!–Joe T.